THINGS NEW AND OLD 



IN 



DISCOURSES 



OF 



Christian Truth and Life. 



BY 



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WASHINGTON GLADDEN 




COLUMBUS, ()., 
^. ZE3I. SIMIYTIHIIE. 

1883. 



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Copyright applied for. 



CONTENTS. 

J-- PAGE. 

Things New and Old, 1 

II 
Good Gifts to Our Children 21 

III. 

Nature and Spirit, 39 

IV. 
The Great Voice from Heaven, ....... 53 

V. 
The Central Doctrine of Protestantism, ... 69 

T7. 
The Parable of the Climbing Plants, .... 83 

VII 
The Taming of the Tongue, 97 

VIII 
The Ta ^d Tongue, Ill 

IX. 

The Law and the Gospel, 125 



PAGE. 



IV CONTENTS. 

X. 
"How Much is He Worth?" 139 

XI. 
Hagar in the Wilderness, 153 

XII. 

The Futility of the Sensuous, 169 

XIII. 
Homes and How to Make Them, 183 

XIV. 
Praying in Christ's Name, 201 

XV. 
Example and Life, . . . 215 

XVI. 
The Necessity of Christ's Resurrection, . . . 229 

XVII. 

The Gospel in the Grass, 239 

A' VIII. 

The Consecration of the People, 253 

XIX. 
The Church of the Future .... 271 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

Matthew xiii: 52. 

"And he said unto them, Therefore every scribe who hath been made 
a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is 
a householder, which bringeth out of his treasure things new and 
old." 

This is the comment with which our Lord closes 
that wonderful chapter of parables, wherein He sets forth 
the nature of His kingdom under a variety of figures, 
opening wide glimpses into the spiritual realms, and 
showing the relation of the life that now is to the life 
that is to come. One truth underlies all these repre- 
sentations — the truth, namely, that past and present and 
future are all one day, known to the Lord ; that as the 
present is the fruit of the past so it is the seed of the 
future ; that what the world now is can never be ex- 
plained but by the reverent study of the providential 
causes that have been at work in the past ; that what 
the world is to be in the future can only be predicted 
by a reverent study of the results now reached and the 
causes now at work ; that the kingdom of heaven is 
an organism steadily developing under the divine hand, 



4 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and requiring in every scribe who studies and teaches 
its truths that large discourse which looks before and 
after. The parable of the sower, the parable of the 
wheat and tares, the parable of the seed growing secretly, 
the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of the 
leaven, all involve this thought of an orderly develop- 
ment of the kingdom of righteousness in the hearts of 
men, and in the life of society. 

In all growth the new and the old are brought 
together in a necessary and vital relation. The old is 
the matrix of the new ; the new is the progeny of the 
old. Some measure of stability there must be and some 
power of movement, else there can be no improvement 
in the character or in the community. To get the bear- 
ings of this principle, let us study for a little some 
of the most obvious phenomena of growth. 

The most familiar illustration, perhaps, is seen in 
the growth of one of our common exogenous trees like 
the maple or the elm. What is the process of growth 
in organisms of this nature? The growth of the tree 
consists of the yearly addition of a layer of new wood, 
and a layer of new bark. There is also an increase 
in the number and the length of the branches of the 
tree ; but inasmuch as the processes of growth carried on 
in the top of the tree are physiologically the same as 
those which are carried on in the trunk of the tree, 
we may confine our attention to the trunk. The new 
double ring is added to the trunk of the tree, between 
the bark and the wood. What is called the cambium 
layer divides the wood from the bark, and it is in this 
layer that all the growth takes place, in the spring 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 5 

time. The new life carries on its magical processes 
in this thin zone underneath the bark ; it is here that 
its shuttles play ; it is here that its tissues are spun. 
Those inscrutable forces of life that some physiologists 
call the bioplasts, little specks of living protoplasm, 
take the matter of life found in this cambium layer, 
and transform it, turning part of it into fiber which is 
added to the outside of the wood of the trunk, and part 
of it into fiber which is added to the inside of the bark. 
A layer of bark is thus added every year as well as a 
layer of wood. And it is surely a marvellous power that 
these minute bioplasts possess, the power that enables them 
to fashion from the same material these two fabrics, so dif- 
ferent in character ; to be weaving at the same time wood 
and bark from the same warp and the same woof; to be 
turning part of the structural energy inward, and part of it 
outward, making the inner investiture of strength and 
the outer garment of covering for the body of the tree. 
If, then, a layer is added to the bark each year, why 
is it that the bark is not as thick as the trunk? Be- 
cause on most trees the outer bark dries and falls off; 
the rains and storms and winds wear away its surface. 
All the outer layers of the bark are dead ; and so, 
for that matter, are all the inner layers of the wood — 
what is called the heart of the tree. It is possible that 
there is some life in the outer layers of the wood ; those 
immediately beneath the cambium layer, constituting 
what is called the alburnum or sap-wood ; through these 
outer layers some circulation of fluids takes place, but 
it may be that this is wholly a mechanical process ; 
that these layers only furnish channels through which 






6 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the nourishment is carried up to the top of the tree. 
I am not enough of a physiologist to be able to say 
whether or not there is any life in these outer layers ; 
but it is agreed, I believe, that the inner part of the tree 
has ceased to live ; and that all the active processes of 
growth take place in that one cambium layer that sep- 
arates the bark from the wood. All that is new in the 
life of this tree is found in this thin zone outside the 
woody portion, and inside its covering. 

The fact on which I wish to fix your attention is 
that the new and the old are both essential to the growth 
of the tree : the old supports and protects the new ; 
the new augments and beautifies the old. The heart 
of the tree is not alive, — it is composed of matter 
formed, not forming; and that which is formed, — in 
which no processes of change are going on, is not alive. 
Nothing is alive which has assumed a permanent form, 
and is undergoing no structural changes. Life and change 
are synonymous terms. The heart of the tree is not alive ; 
neither is the outer portion of the bark ; but these old 
tissues — these that are formed, and are no longer alive — 
have much to do with the life of the tree. The strength 
of the heart holds up the trunk with its crown of 
branches and leaves, resisting the onset of the winds, 
and giving the processes of life going on in the newer 
portions of the tree a chance to do their work. The 
old bark, that is no longer alive, serves as a protection 
for the cambium layer, in which the life-builders are 
driving their marvellous mechanism. Of course the life 
and growth of the tree depend on the work of these 
life-builders ; but their work could not be done were it 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 7 

not for the protection and support afforded them by those 
portions of the tree that are no longer alive. The new and 
the old are both essential to the processes of vegetable 
growth. 

The same thing is true of growth in the animal 
kingdom. I cannot undertake to make plain to you in 
five minutes all that the microscope has revealed con- 
cerning the processes of life in the human body and 
in other sentient creatures ; it is enough to say that 
all animal organisms are composed of minute cells, not 
one five-hundredth of an inch in diameter ; that the 
work of transforming food and other nutriment into 
living substance goes on within these cells ; that the outer- 
most portion of these cells, within which the work is 
done, consists of matter which is not truly alive, old 
material, that now serves only as the bark of the tree 
serves, for an enclosure or work-shop for the little builders 
whose work goes on within. Through the walls of these 
little workshops the nutrient matter passes to the bio- 
plasts that are busy inside, working it up, first into 
living matter, and then changing it into formed matter 
and adding it to the walls of the cells, which thus be- 
come thicker and thicker until no more nourishment 
can pass through them. This matter which was once 
alive, but has ceased to live, is gradually removed by 
the excretory organs. Mr. Huxley describes this process 
in general terms when he tells us in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica (Article "Biology") that "a process of waste, 
resulting from the decomposition of the molecules of 
the protoplasm, in virtue of which they break up into 
more highly oxidated products which cease to form any 



8 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

part of the living body, is a constant concomitant of 
life." And in the same Encyclopedia, Professor Schaefer 
tells us (Article "Histology") that even in the lowest or- 
ganisms, those composed of a single cell, this work of 
changing the living into the not living takes place, — 
a shell or test being produeed " which subserves purely 
passive functions of sustentation or defence." 

Animal growth is thus seen to be akin to vegetable 
growth. You see in the shell of an oyster precisely 
what you see in the bark of a tree ; the outside of 
this shell is evidently no longer alive ; the shell is 
growing, but its growth takes places within ; part of it 
is forming ; that part is alive ; part of it is formed ; it 
is undergoing no further structural changes ; that part 
is not living. And although it is not possible for us 
to detect with the unaided senses those portions of our 
own bodies which are not living, we must bear in mind 
that our bodies are composed of myriads of minute 
cells, woven together into tissues; that .these cells grow 
as the oyster grows ; that the outsides of them are not 
really alive. And the statement is made by microscop- 
ists, that this formed matter, no longer living, makes up 
about four-fifths of our bodies. The fibrine, albumen, 
fatty matter, and salts of which our bodies mainly con- 
sist are substances that are not alive. The life all resides 
in these little nucleated specks of germinal protoplasm, 
within the cells. These minute particles of life are 
distributed through every part of the body, so that you 
could not find a space one five-hundredth of an inch 
in diameter without one or more of them ; nevertheless 
they make up only about one-fifth of the body. 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 9 

It seems, then, that the existence of the human 
body depends on the old as well as the new. Much 
the largest part of the body is made up of that which 
decayeth and waxeth old and is ready to vanish away. 
Yet this old matter is necessary as the receptacle and 
matrix of the new life ; it is this that gives strength 
and bulk and substance and solidity to our bodies. If 
everything were removed at once but that which was new 
and alive, not much would be left of us, — nothing, in- 
deed, by which we could put ourselves into any relations 
with the world about us. 

I have given you in these few words a hasty and 
inadequate account of the discoveries of modern biology; 
but enough has been said to afford another illustration 
of the truth, that in the natural as well as in the spir- 
itual world, that which is old and that which is new 
are joined inseparably in the same organism; that in 
the process of making all things new, much that is not 
new must all the while be present ; and that the old 
has its function not less than the new. 

One other illustration that is worth careful study I 
can only touch. In the progress of society things new 
and old must be combined in the same way. Society 
is an "organism, and the laws of its growth are closely 
analogous to those of other organisms. 

Before there can be any progress, there must be 
some degreee of permanence in the social order. Peo- 
ple must stop roving and begin to live somewhere, and 
their life must begin to find expression in certain fixed 
customs that have the force of laws. So Mr. Bagehot 

in his essay on " Physics and Politics," has vividly shown 

2 



10 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

us. " In early times," he says, " the quantity of gov- 
ernment is much more important than its quality. What 
you want is a comprehensive rule binding men together, 
making them do much the same things, telling them 
what to expect of each other — fashioning them alike 
and keeping them so. * * * The object of such 
organization is to create what may be called a cake of 
custom. All the actions of like are to be submitted 
to a single rule for a single object; that gradually cre- 
ated the hereditary drill which science teaches to be 
essential, and which the earl} 7 instinct of men saw to 
be essential too." It is in and upon this social order, 
thus imposed and maintained, that the principles of 
progress, the love of liberty and " the tendency in every 
man to ameliorate his condition " begin to operate ; out 
of the shell of custom thus formed the bird of free- 
dom finally breaks its way. Custom and law represent 
that which is fixed and unchangeable ; they are the 
"formed matter" of civilization, just as the wall of the 
cell is the formed matter of the physiological builders ; 
and they are as necessary to progress as the walls of 
the cells are to animal growth. They seem to be the 
very antithesis of progress, but they are not : they are 
the condition of progress. What is progress? It is the 
reshaping and improvement of old customs. But you 
must have customs before you can reshape them. You 
must be holding on to something or you cannot reach 
forth to the things that are before. The condition of 
walking is that one foot be planted solidly on the ground. 
I have thus endeavored to bring before your thought 
the relation of the new to t lit* old in all kinds of growth. 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 11 

Both elements are indispensable ; the new life cannot 
perform its functions without the presence and aid of 
that which has lived, but is alive no longer. The old 
furnishes the mold in which the new is fashioned, the 
support on which the new rests while it is coming into 
being. 

Let me apply this law very briefly to the spiritual 
life, first on its intellectual side, and then on the side 
of conduct. 

The old and the new must be continually held to- 
gether in the forming of our creeds and theories of 
religious truth. To say that our religious theories must 
be always reshaping themselves, that the growth of 
knowledge must result in frequent modifications of our 
theological statements, is to utter a commonplace. The 
history of theology shows how continuous these changes 

have been : the least knowledge of human nature con- 

• 

vinces us that such changes must be. A creed that is 
not growing steadily is a dead creed, and ought to be 
buried. That every scribe who has become a disciple 
of the kingdom of heaven will bring forth from his treas- 
ure new things, is evident enough. But it is not always 
so evident as it ought to be in these days that the 
old as well as the new is part of his treasure ; that 
the new can only exist and develope in close relation 
to the old. A theology that has no old truth in it is 
a theology that has in it no truth at all. Do you sup- 
pose that you could get up a brand-new system of doc- 
trine ? You might just as well undertake to produce a 
brand-new elm tree, three feet through, that should not 
have a single layer of old tissue in its trunk. A sys- 



12 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

tem of doctrine has got to grow, just as a tree grows ; 
and one of the consequences of such growth will be 
that certain parts of it will have lost much of their 
vitality. That is not the ideal of progress ; but that 
is the historical fact, the scientific fact. And even if 
some portions of your theology have ceased to be vital, 
it is not best to be in too much haste about removing 
them. In due time they will fall off, if left to the 
operation of spiritual laws ; undue eagerness to strip 
them off may destroy the life that they now support 
and protect. Here is the elm tree with many a shaggy 
layer of dead bark outside and many a solid layer of 
heart wood inside. " Dead wood ! " cries the radical ; " let 
us remove it and destroy it ! " So he tears off every 
particle of the bark, down to the very quick of the 
cambium layer, and he bores and burns all the heart 
wood out of the tree, and leaves nothing but the thin 
outer layers of sap-wood. " This is the only part of 
the tree that is really alive," he says; "this is all we 
want to save; the rest is a detriment and a disgrace!" 
But if the frosts of the first spring do not chill and 
paralyze the life in the tree, thus stripped of its natu- 
ral covering, the March winds will surely topple it over, 
and the radical's triumph will be complete. 

The failure to comprehend this historic law, — this 
fact that the new grows out of the old, and needs the 
old as its support and its protection — is at the bottom of 
the reckless radicalism of the present day. I commend 
to the men who are so eager to demolish every ele- 
ment in Christian belief that they cannot i'ullv reconcile 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. IS 

with their own ideas of truth, a little careful study of 
the laws of growth in other departments of life. 

There is a caution, however, not less needed on the 
other side. There is in nature ample provision for re- 
moving the formed matter when it has served its pur- 
pose, so that it shall not obstruct the growth of the 
organism. The bark of the tree protects the cambium 
layer, but is not allowed to bind the tree so tightly as 
to prevent the circulation of the sap. The growing tree 
bursts the envelope of bark, and often casts off much 
of it. The corrugated, shaggy surface of the oak or 
the maple or the hickory show how the expanding life 
rends this lifeless integument. It would not do to put 
a thrifty tree into an inelastic straight-jacket of bark. 
It would kill the tree. 

Something like this is often attempted in behalf 
of religious thought by persons who suppose that in 
doing it they are promoting the interests of soundness- 
They undertake to frame regulations or enact laws pro- 
viding that certain fixed phrases or formularies shall be 
inflexibly and unchangeably held as containing the whole 
of truth. A certain seminary in New England was built 
upon an elaborate and minute theological creed, and the 
founders strictly and solemnly enjoined that every article 
of this creed should "forever remain entirely and iden- 
tically the same without the least alteration, addition, or 
diminution." What a prodigious conviction of his own 
omniscience the man must have who could put such a 
provision into the charter of a theological seminary ! 
Did these godly founders suppose that they knew all 
the theology that ever ought to exist and that wisdom 



lJf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

would die with them? What right had they to ordain 
that every scribe employed to teach the doctrine of the 
Kingdom in that seminary should forever bring forth 
out of his treasure everything old and nothing new? 

The value of historic creeds, or confessions of faith 
in .guiding and steadying the movements of religious 
thought, no wise man will dispute ; the folly of rashly 
casting them away has been, I trust, sufficiently de- 
monstrated ; nevertheless historic confessions must be his- 
torically interpreted ; it is only by a large, free method 
of handling them that they are kept from being fetters 
to the life of faith. 

Not only in the formation of our beliefs, but in 
the shaping of our methods of thinking this discussion 
ought to help us. Mankind is divided, for the most 
part, into two hostile camps — radicals on one side, con- 
servatives on the other ; men who despise everything 
that is old and men who hate everything that is new. 
The wise man belongs to neither of these camps ; he 
has learned to take a broader view which unites what 
God has joined together, and what these contending 
parties are trying to put asunder. When he finds two 
disputants fighting over a question he always reflects 
that it is often possible, by the use of a little patience 
and comprehension, to discover a statement that shall 
include both the truths for which they are contending. 
He is not a partisan of the new nor of the old; he 
has been a disciple of the kingdom of heaven long 
enough to have in his treasure, and to be able to bring 
out of it, things new and old. 

When we pass from the realm of opinion to the 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 15 

realm of conduct, we find still other uses for our prin- 
ciple. In our work as citizens and as reformers of 
society, the new and the old must always be blended. 
The great elements of manhood are no novelties. Faith, 
hope, love, obedience, courage, patience, fidelity, these 
are all old fashioned virtues — old as the patriarchs — 
but nothing better has been invented in the most mod- 
ern times. Nevertheless new occasions are always arising 
for the exercise of these virtues and they find new fields 
to till and new tongues to speak and new weapons to 
wield in every generation. It is for us to give new 
life and meaning to these old virtues. 

The society about us requires the infusion of some 
new elements. The people among whom we live need 
to see new views of truth, and to be stirred to new 
duties and to be led into new ways ; this is part 
of our high calling ; but let us not suffer ourselves 
to forget how many and precious are the elements in 
our social life that must be sacredly and thankfully con- 
served. There are many changes, in these days, we say ; 
and so there are ; some for the better, and some, no 
doubt, for the worse ; yet how many things there are 
that do not change, thank God ! The face of the country 
alters somewhat, from year to year ; . here is a field where 
once was a forest ; and here is a village where once was 
a farm ; but after all the great features of the earth 
remain substantially the same from one generation to 
another ; 

"The hills 
Kock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — " 



16 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

stand just where they stood when the prow of the 
caraval of Columbus first cut the water of our Western 
seas ; the valleys lie in peace between and the rivers 
keep their courses ; while over all the stars shine nightly 
as they shone upon Abraham when he journeyed from 
Haran to the far land of promise. There are great 
changes, you say, in the husbandry of these days ; new 
machines, new methods, new industries, — and this is 
true ; yet all the great facts and laws of husbandry are 
the same to-day that they were when Joseph filled the 
granaries of Pharaoh ; it is the same energy of life 
in the seed ; the same old earth that hides and feeds 
it ; the same old sun that quickens it ; the same gentle 
rain that waters it; the same vigilant industry that 
plants and tends and harvests it. So it is in the 
community. Some changes are constantly taking place 
therein, and in most communities more changes might 
well take place ; but none of us is likely to be called 
to live in any neighborhood in this Christian land where 
the duty of guarding and cherishing that which is old 
will not be one of his first duties. The institutions of 
our free government — how old they are, and how sacred I 
Many persons imagine that our Revolutionary fathers 
invented them; but -some of you know how deep their 
roots run down into English history. The duty of 
protecting these from the spoilers is part of our high 
calling. The Church of God — it is as old as the human 
race, and nothing will ever be found to take the place 
of its holy sacraments and its solemn services. It is 
a branch of God's own planting, and it shall not be 
] (lucked up. To water it with the dew of youth and 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 17 

nourish it with the strength of manhood, — this, too, is 
part of our high calling. The family — whose nurture 
most of us have known, whose sacred influences have 
molded all our lives — the family is no nineteenth 
century discovery ; but it is the most precious thing on 
the earth to-day. What infinite stores of tenderness 
and grace and inspiration there are abiding in the tens 
of thousands of American homes. A little scene that 
I saw in the railway car not long ago — a young mother, 
with her first child, coming home from the far West on 
a visit to her father's house ; the door of the car 
opening at the station next before the one to which she 
was bound, and a man with beard sprinkled with gray 
entering ; the young matron, flying to him, and flinging 
herself into his arms ; and then the two coming back 
together; the grandfather picking up the little one — 
the child of his child — and searching its face with 
unspeakable tenderness, while the mother looked on 
proud and happy — who could see it and not have the 
thankful tears spring into his eyes because of what it 
told him of the strength and sacredness of the bond 
that binds parents and children together in the sanctuary 
of the household. Of this sanctuary we are called to 
be the guardians and defenders ; against all the foes 
with unclean hands that now assail its foundations 
and spoil its peace we are called to wage a holy war- 
fare ; by all our memories of home, and the love we 
bear our mothers, we are prompted to honor and cherish 
this oldest and divinest of the gifts of God to man. 
That we must be ready in all our intercourse with 
men to welcome new truth, to lead in new movements 



18 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

for the elevation of society, to be ourselves the harbingers 
of new ideas and enterprises — all this scarcely needs 
saying. The Zeitgeist, as Mr. Arnold cals it, keeps us 
mindful of this duty ; I only wish to show how much 
there is to conserve as well as to create ; how the 
spirit of reverence must always be joined with the 
spirit of invention ; how the new and the old must be 
always inseparably joined in the work of the wise social 
reformer. 

There remains to be considered the relation of this 
law of growth to the formation of character. The true 
life healthily combines that which is new with that which 
is old. 

That which is old in our experience is that part 
of our life which has become habitual. That ought to 
be the largest part of our moral and religious life 
The formation of good habits — habits of devotion — 
habits of church-going, and of Bible study, and of private 
meditation and secret prayer; habits of just and con- 
siderate and kindly speech ; habits of careful and dis- 
criminating thought; habits of activit} r in all good work, 
and of fidelity in the discharge of every obligation we 
assume; habits of benevolence in giving and in serving; 
habits of courtesy and temperance and manly dignity 
and womanly grace — this is a most important element in 
moral and religious culture. We ought to be learning 
to do many of these things — to illustrate many of these 
virtues — without effort or volition, as by second nature. 
Our good feelings, wishes, impulses, the good promptings of 
the Spirit of all grace, ought to be continually solidifying 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 19 

into habits. Writers on habits often confine themselves 
to the danger of forming evil habits ; but the importance 
of forming good ones needs to be enforced, not less 
strenuously. The best part — at any rate the largest 
part — of every life is habitual, and the need of getting 
the good thoughts and purposes and sentiments that 
are often fitful and desultory organized into habits is 
therefore urgent. The transformation of the floating 
capital of virtue into fixed capital is the condition of 
all highest growth. 

As four-fifths of the healthy physical organism is 
formed matter, so I think at least four-fifths of the 
spiritual organism should be formed character. 

Yet the character thus formed needs to be continually 
reformed. New light, new truths, new relations, new 
powers, call for new adjustments of our thought and new 
departures in our conduct. A religious life that is summed 
up in its habits ; that is wholly formed and never re- 
newed ; into which no new motives, no new inspirations 
no new endeavors enter, is a poor and barren life. If 
we have put on the new man, that is no excuse for a 
stereotyped experience. Paul says that the " new man " 
is one who is " being renewed day by day." He would 
not be a new man long unless this were true of him. 

While therefore the Christian character needs those 
elements of permanence and solidity which are furnished 
by good habits, while these are necessary conditions of 
life and growth, it needs also fresh thinking, fresh 
resolution, fresh endeavor every day. Some measure of 
order and regularity it must possess ; but when it degen- 
erates into mere routine — when the prayers are routine 



20 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

prayers, and the service is a routine service, and there are 
no new visions of truth, and no new views of duty, the 
divine life withers and perishes in the soul of man. It 
thrives only upon the wise combination of things new and 
old. It joins the steadfastness and strength of good habits 
with the freshness and joy of daily inspirations. 

There is but one more word, but that ma} 7 be to some 
of you of deeper moment than anything I have said. Who 
is this that brings forth from his treasure things new 
and old? It is not the bachelor of science, it is not the 
student of literature, it is not the doctor of divinity, it is 
one who has been admitted to higher honors, who has been 
made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven. If you have 
entered upon that discipleship, if by a sincere and hearty 
faith you have chosen Jesus Christ to be the Lord of all 
your life, then, from the exhaustless treasures of his grace 
you may bring forth every day the wisdom that shall 
guide you and the strength that shall nerve you and the 
hope that shall hearten you in the strife before you. Under 
this Master, in this discipleship, you shall work out the 
problems of life successfully, and you cannot afford to 
try to work them out alone. His grace will not fail you ; 
the power that comes from self-conquest and the peace 
that follows after He is waiting to give to every man who 
will become his disciple. May God help you to seek His 
friendship if you have not found it ; to trust it more and 
more ; to walk in the strength and joy of it through all 
your days of toil and sorrow, and to enter at last by its 
commanding word the gates of that city where we shall 
hail old friends with new faces, and speak old words 
with new meaning, and fill the eternal arches with our 
glad new song. 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 



Matthew vii: 9-11. 

" Or what man is there of you, who if his son shall ask him, for a 
loaf will give him a stone, or if he shall ash for a fish will give 
him a serpent f If ye then, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts unto your children" 

It is true, then, that all parents ought to know how 
to give good gifts to their children. But the knowing how 
to which Jesus refers in the text is the disposition of the 
father, rather than his discernment; his willingness, more 
than his wisdom. "You who are parents," he says, "have 
the wish and the will to do your children good ; you do 
not mean anything but kindness ; and your heavenly 
Father's purposes toward you are certainly not less kind 
than yours toward your children." This is what our 
Lord teaches by this comparison. He certainly does not 
say that the judgment of parents as to what things are 
good for their children is always wise. No father means 
to give his child a stone instead of a loaf; but many a 
father ignorantly gives his boy a loaf with a stone in it. 
And the duty of knowing how to give good gifts, in a 
literal sense — of having not only the disposition but the 



22 GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 

intelligence necessary for the giving of good gifts — is a 
duty that needs to be studied. 

"But is this necessary?" some one is asking. "Is 
not love the fulfilling of the law? And if we love our 
children — and we certainly do love them — will not love 
be the surest guide in bestowing our gifts on them?" Un- 
fortunately it will not. There are proofs enough, all about 
us, that the impulse of affection is not always wise. Love 
is the fulfilling of the law, only when there is first a 
law for love to fulfil. Your ideals are the product not of 
affection, but of intelligence. You must have some notion 
of what ought to be done before love can prompt you 
to do anything. Our wisdom and our conscience lay 
down the lines on which affection runs. Love fills the 
law, and overfills it, with its own sweet impulse ; but 
the law must be there, or love is as likely to be a curse as a 
blessing. We need, therefore, not merely to cherish a 
fondness for our children, but also diligently to apply 
our minds to the problem of determining what gifts are 
best for them. The obligations thus laid down will give 
the law to love — a law that love may safely fulfil. 

What, then, are the gifts we owe our children? 

1. First among them is a careful training in obedience. 
Training in obedience, I say ; not simply teaching them 
obedience. And what is training? To train a body of 
troops is not merely to give them lectures on tactics, but to 
put them through the manual of arms so often and so 
thoroughly that they shall come at length to move under 
the order of the commander with promptness and precision. 
Training involves not merely instruction, hut drill and 
discipline. It implies nol only telling a child what he 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 23 

ought to do but showing him how to do it, and making him 
do it over and over again, until the doing of the thing shall 
come to be a second nature to him. 

The training of a boat's crew is not only making 
known to them the way to dip and to pull and to feather 
and to recover, but it is the exercise of the crew in these 
movements every day. 

To train a vine is not merely to mark out on the wall 
or the trellis the place where you want the vine to run, but 
to lead it carefully along and fasten it, by proper means, in 
that place. 

Training involves, therefore, uniformity and continuity 
of action. The training of a company of soldiers or a crew 
of oarsmen proceeds regularly, without intermission, day 
by day. If the troops went through the manual of arms 
only now and then, semi-occasionally, as it happened to 
suit their caprice or the convenience of the drill master, 
they would never be brought under thorough discipline. 
The oarsmen in training for a race row every clav, and in 
the winter, when the river is frozen, they have an apparatus 
rigged in the gymnasium by which they secure the same 
kind of exercise, every day. 

These illustrations show what is meant by the training 
of children. It is leading them to practice, steadily and 
regularly, day by day, the lessons of conduct that you teach 
them. 

Probably most of us err in teaching too much, and in 
training too little. There is too much teaching and scold- 
ing, and too little steady enforcement of the laws laid down. 
Training implies government, but not violent methods. 
The regular performance of certain duties must be required 



2Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

of the children ; some of these duties will be irksome to 
them ; their sports will call them away, and there must be 
authority to hold them firmly to the performance. The 
moral order of a household ought to be as inflexible as 
the order of nature, and ought to be enforced just as 
quietly. 

And this training is itself a realized obedience. It is a 
drill in obedience. It couples with submission and sub- 
ordination of the will an automatic tendency. Training 
has many uses besides securing the habit of obedience ; but 
it secures obedience and this is the prime quality of good 
character. No man is good for anything who has not 
learned the easy, prompt, cheerful submission of his will to 
rightful authority. All his life he will live under the hand 
of rightful authority ; the first condition of his peace and 
welfare is that he should readily submit to it. He must 
obey the laws of the State, or be a felon ; he must obey the 
orders of his superiors in business, or he can never engage 
in business ; he must obey the laws of nature, or be a 
helpless invalid or a crazy fool ; he must obey the laws 
of God, or make shipwreck of his life. How necessary it 
is, therefore, that he learn in his childhood to submit 
himself to rightful authority ! The child who has not been 
taught that lesson has been defrauded of the greatest 
benefit his parents could bestow upon him. I have known 
many whose lives were failures from this cause alone; 
in their childhood they never learned obedience; and the 
habit of insubordination made it impossible for them to 
work in harness; the testy temper and the unschooled will 
constantly ruptured their relations with men and destroyed 
the very conditions <>!' success. Whatever else you fail to 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 25 

give your children, fail not to train them in this one 
essential of the highest character. 

It seems to those who have not tried it an easy matter 
to enforce obedience, but it is not half so easy as it seems. 
There are many who make much ado about it, but never 
secure it ; there are some who seem to get it without any 
effort at all. I saw on a railway train, one day last autumn, 
a mother take a little girl of two years old — a thoroughly 
vital, active child — and lay her down upon the seat of the 
car, a little distance from herself, for her afternoon nap. It 
was gently, smilingly done ; there was no exercise of power 
in the case ; the child looked up sweetly in the mother's 
face ; there was no reminiscence in the look of a former 
struggle, in which the stronger will had conquered ; there 
had been no such struggle ; and when the mother went 
away to her own seat, the child lay there, cooing and 
prattling to herself, now and then calling in the sweetest 
and happiest way, " Good night, mamma ! " By and by the 
mother came and bent over her ; a smile was on her face all 
the while, and the smile was reflected from the baby's face ; 
the mother spoke low ; I could not hear what she said 
but I knew that she was telling the baby that she musn't 
talk ; and when she returned to her seat the child lay there, 
perfectly silent, looking about her in a childish way, her 
large eyes full of speculation, thinking over in silence her 
own baby thoughts which she had before been thinking 
aloud, until at last the eyelids drooped and she fell asleep. 
Now that mother had the faculty of enforcing obedience 
in the right way. No doubt her will was firm ; there 
was no vacillation or uncertainty ; but her ways were so 
gentle and wise that the child's obedience was secured 



26 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

without an effort. Happy child, to be under the care 
of such a mother ! It is a great gift ; not all of us have it 
by nature ; but it ought to be earnestly coveted and 
diligently cultivated by all of us. 

I am convinced that the value of obedience has been 
greatly overlooked in onr recent American life. The fierce 
individualism of our modern civilization has invaded the 
household ; the Declaration of Independence seems to be 
taught to babes in their cradles ; parents assert their authority 
weakly and with uncertainty ; children often challenge it 
defiantly and successfully. It is a great national misfortune. 
Lawlessness in the household will breed lawlessness in the 
state. Co-ordinated society rests back on discipline in the 
family. Mr. Bagehot says : " In a Roman family the boys, 
from the time of their birth, were bred to a domestic 
despotism which well prepared them for a subjection in 
after life to a military discipline, a military drill, and 
a military despotism. They were ready to obey their 
generals because they were compelled to obey their fathers ; 
they conquered the world in manhood because as children 
they were bred in homes where the tradition of passionate 
valor was steadied by the habit of implacable order." 

Now we want no despotism, parental nor military : but 
we do want order and subordination : no nation can live 
without them; and if we keep them in the state, we must 
have them first in the household. It is a patriotic duty 
that we owe the state as well as a sacred duty we owe our 
children to give them a thorough schooling in this primary 
virtue. 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 27 

"Three roots bear up dominion; Knowledge, Will, 
These two are strong, but stronger still the third, 

Obedience; 'tis the great tap-root, which still, 
Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred 

Though storm and tempest spend their utmost skill." 

2. Another gift that we owe our children is a careful 
training in the unselfish virtues. Here, again, the difference 
between teaching and training comes distinctly into view. 
It is by no means sufficient to teach our children to 
be unselfish, or to set them an example of unselfishness ; 
we must give them a chance to exercise the altruistic 
virtues ; to take pains and make sacrifices for others. 
Many parents, in the excess of their good nature, take 
upon themselves all the burdens and hardships of the 
family, letting the children grow up in indolence and 
pleasure — taking on themselves no care, helping, in no 
way, to bear the common load. Parents sometimes sup- 
pose that by their own self-sacrifice in behalf of their 
children they will teach their children self-sacrifice, but 
unfortunately it is not always so ; the children become 
heartless instead of dutiful ; they take as a matter of 
course all that is given them or done for them and are 
not ashamed to ask for more ; they are hardened and 
spoiled by the indulgence. This habit of unselfishness, 
like the habit of obedience, must be learned by practice ; 
and it is a great wrong to our children not to give them 
plenty of opportunities to practice it for the benefit of 
one another, and of their parents. The parents are con- 
tinually denying themselves for the benefit of their chil- 
dren, and the children must often deny themselves for 



28 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the benefit of their parents. It is not right for the parents 
to go seedy that the children may be dressed in finery ; 
it is not right for the parents to toil and moil night 
and day to gain money for the children to spend in 
idleness and pleasuring. It is not fair to the children, 
to let them grow up in this way. Do give your chil- 
dren a chance, I pray — a chance to acquire by practice 
in their childhood those common virtues of unselfishness, 
those habits of postponing their own pleasure for the 
good of others, without which their lives will be full 
of irritation and warfare. 

Not only obedience but unselfishness, also, is the 
condition of living happily in co-ordinated society. A 
society in which each one is guaranteed his simple rights ; 
in which contracts are enforced, and no man is hindered 
in pursuing his interests, would not be the best society. 
" Daily experiences prove," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, " that 
every one would suffer many evils and lose many goods, 
did none give him unpaid assistance. The life of each 
would be more or less damaged, had he to meet all 
contingencies single-handed. Further, if no one did for 
his fellows anything more than was required by strict 
performance of contract, private interests would suffer 
from the absence of attention to public interests." That 
would be a wretched state of society in which there were 
no unselfish and voluntary efforts to further the wel- 
fare of others, and to promote without reward the general 
welfare. And Mr. Spencer says, in another place, in his 
philosophic phrases, that "only when altruistic relations 
in the domestic group have reached highly developed 
forms, do there arise conditions making possible full 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 29 

development of altruistic relations in the political group." 
The words are technical but the meaning is not obscure. 
It is a statement of the simple truth that only when chil- 
dren are trained at home to live for others, does society 
become, fit to live in. 

Here, too, you see how far reaching are the effects 
of our home training. Not only is the child who is 
suffered to grow up with egoistic temper and habits 
wholly unfitted to find any comfort and happiness for 
himself in life, he is also seen to be a disturbing and 
disorganizing force in society. If all people were like 
him there could be no society. How important is it, 
then, that you give your children careful training in the 
altruistic virtues ! It is not enough to teach them to 
care for themselves ; they must learn to care for others. 

3. Another gift that we ought to impart to our 
children is a worthy and high ideal. By this I mean 
that we ought, in choosing for them, to choose the highest 
things ; to set before ourselves, as the prize which we 
want them to win, that which is really precious, and 
to lead them, so far as we can, to choose that which 
we have chosen for them. This last is often a difficult 
thing to do. It is not always possible to get the grow- 
ing, mercurial, boisterous boy to look upon life with 
his father's eyes ; to take the same view of what is 
best and highest that his father takes. But it is pos- 
sible for you to choose a worthy career and a noble 
destiny, and to keep your choice before them, assisting 
them, so far as you can, to comprehend its worthiness 
and its nobility. 

What is it that you have chosen for your children? 



30 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

It is well to settle it in your own minds. What are 
the possessions and attainments that you most covet for 
them? What is the kind of success that you are most 
anxious they should achieve? Is it material success? Is 
it the possession of wealth? Is it social standing? Is 
it political advancement for your son? Is it a marriage 
for your daughter with some rich man who can assure 
her a life of elegant leisure? Are these things, or such 
as these, the things that you most desire your children 
to obtain? Or do you most earnestly covet for them the 
values of character, — intelligence, purity, integrity, cour- 
age, manliness, womanliness, faith, charity? Concerning 
which of these classes of desirable possessions have you 
the most anxiety? Doubtless the financial and the social 
successes are desirable ; you have a perfect right to. wish 
that they may gain a fair measure of such worldly good ; 
but on which of these kinds of good does the emphasis 
fall when you speak to yourselves in secret places of the 
future of your children? Of course you want them to 
be good and pure and noble, but is that what you want 
most? 

I am afraid that this is not what all parents most 
desire for their children. Some pretty good people, some 
church members, act as though they thought these things 
of minor importance. It is plain that they want their 
children to get on in life ; to have good situations ; to 
win promotion ; to make fortunate alliances ; they want 
all these things for them, very much ; but it is not so plain 
that they want them to be upright and clean and brave 
and faithful. Would they be willing to have their chil- 
dren sacrifice those material gains for these spiritual ones? 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 31 

Well, it is not so clear ; it looks as though they would 
think it too great a sacrifice. 

Now the truth is that the children are sure to know 
what our deepest and strongest wishes are concerning them. 
It does not matter what we say ; they know what is in our 
hearts. And although it may be hard to get them to choose 
for themselves the highest things, even if we do choose the 
highest things for them, they will be pretty sure not to 
choose the highest things if they know that we are most 
earnestly coveting for them things that are lower. They 
will not be apt to set their mark any higher than we set 
it for them. They may do so, but it is not probable that 
they will. Therefore it is of the utmost moment that our 
choice for them should be the highest ; that our ideal of 
life — the ideal which the constant tenor of our conduct sets 
before them — be a noble ideal. 

There is many a boy whose character is not yet con- 
firmed, whose ideas vary, and whose purposes vacillate, 
who yet can say for himself, and does often say to himself 
when he has a thoughtful hour : "I know what my father 
and mother want me to be. They want me to be true, and 
honest, and manty and pure ; they want me to be courteous 
in manners, and generous in action ; they want me to be a 
Christian gentleman'. They would like me to have a good 
position in society of course, and to prosper in business, 
and all that ; but they are a thousand times more anxious 
that I should be good than that I should be rich or popular 
or powerful. It is not so much by what they say that I 
know it ; every thing they do for me, all their own conduct, 
makes me sure of what their deepest wishes are." Now 
a boy who can say that has been made the recipient of a 



32 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

good gift from his father and mother. He may not have 
accepted fully for himself their choice for him, but he has 
before his mind the right ideal of life ; it must allure him 
sometimes ; it may win him to choose it heartily for him- 
self at last. 

4. Another good gift that we may impart to our 
children is education. I do not use this word in a narrow, 
technical way. I mean to include in it all the forces that 
we can bring to bear that tend toward the enlargement 
of their intelligence and the invigoration of their character. 
Every opportunity, of whatever sort, that you afford a 
child, by means of which his knowledge is increased, his 
judgment trained, his moral sense purified, may be re- 
garded as part of his education. It is not merely his 
schooling — that is part of it, and may be a most valuable 
part ; it is all the expenditure that you make for the 
development of his power. This expenditure ought to be 
considered in the light of an investment. 

One of the religious newspapers had an editorial last 
summer on investing in a boy. It is a good word to 
ponder. A boy is a good sort of security for you to invest 
in ; and a girl is just as good. Looked at in a commercial 
way, they are about as good securities as any. But I am 
not looking at them now in a commercial way. It may be 
true, as Dr. Magoon once sardonically said, that many 
a father, after spending much money on the education of a 
stupid boy, might Avell cry out in the words of Aaron, " I 
cast all that gold into the fire, and lo there came out this 
calf!" But it would be a cynical view of life which repre- 
sented this to be .the rule. There are and always will be 
unfilial children : as there arc. nod always will be, parents 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 33 

who never do any thing to deserve filial love and reverence ; 
but it is the rule that what parents thoughtfully and wisely 
invest in their children, brings them the best returns they 
ever get. If it does not all come back in money, that is no 
sign that it is wasted. If the money that you expend 
on your boy's education makes a man of him ; fits him to 
live a happy and a useful life ; enlarges the horizon of his 
mind ; opens to him the resources of nature and of litera- 
ture ; enables him to commune with the great minds of the 
race, and to think God's thoughts after him — it is money 
well invested, even if it does not result in making of him a 
Gould or a Vanderbilt. Money that you expend on clothes, 
and luxuries, and diversions — on giving children what are 
sometimes called social advantages, may not always be 
wisely expended ; but every thing that you can do with 
money toward building up their manhood or their woman- 
hood ; toward enlarging their mental or their moral powers* 
is money well expended. 

5. Finally, a good gift wherewith you may enrich your 
•children is your confidence. You can believe in them. 
You can hold fast your faith in their future. And that, by 
the way, is a good gift that you can all bestow on children ; 
on other people's children as well as your own ; on other 
people's children, if you have none of your own. The 
charity that believeth all things and hopeth all things, is 
worth just as much to children as to grown folks. Indeed I 
think it is needed by children rather more than by grown 
folks. And yet I am quite sure that other people's children 
get from us, as a general rule, much less charity than would 
be good for them ; much less, indeed, than they deserve. 
It is strange to see how ready many persons are to believe 



34 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

all evil of their neighbor's children ; to put the worst con- 
struction upon their conduct ; to refuse to see in them 
any redeeming qualities. Such judgments often greatly 
injure those who suffer them ; many a child whose purpose 
was none too strong has been driven into evil ways by the 
suspicion and lack of friendliness that met him at every 
turn. Let us be careful how we hang this millstone round 
any young person's neck. A slight paraphrase of the 
golden rule would be well worth remembering by all of us : 
Whatsoever ye would that other people should do to your 
children, do ye even so to other people's children. 

And if we ought to give to the children of our 
neighbors the benefit of your confidence, surely we ought 
not to withhold it from our own. "Expectations, like 
prophesies," I once read somewhere, " tend to fulfil them- 
selves." A good strong expectation on behalf of our 
children, a positive faith in their future, will be a comfort 
to us, and a blessing to them. 

The very best thing about the Puritan faith was the 
confidence which it inspired in parents concerning the 
future of their children. The doctrine of the covenant, 
as it was alwa}-s taught, gave to believers a basis of 
faith concerning their children on which they were led 
to repose with assurance. No matter what the theolog- 
ical origin of this faith may have been ; the faith was 
there in the mind of the Puritan, an integral part of his 
religion. It was his duty to believe that the children whom 
God had given to him, and whom he had given back 
to the Lord in baptism, woutd be kept from falling, or 
would be restored if they should wander. The filling 
of the heart and of the home with such a confidence 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 35 

as this, was the best of blessings to the child. It held 
him back when he was prone to wander ; it called him 
back when he had gone astray. 

It does most people good to believe in them, to have 
strong hopes for them, to refuse to prophesy evil con- 
cerning them. It is a sad thing for a child when his 
parents lose faith in his future. He is sure to find it 
out, and' the effect upon him is depressing. Whatever 
we can do, therefore, to strengthen our own faith in the 
future of our children we ought to do ; for very much 
according to our faith will it be, not only to us, but 
also to our children. 

By what means, therefore, can our faith be strength- 
ened? Often, I believe, it will be strengthened by knowing 
our children better ; by entering more fully into their 
inner lives. Doubtless we shall often find to our joy, 
that seeds of good which we had implanted in their 
natures have found lodgment there ; that sound principles 
of conduct from which they are not likely to swerve 
are taking shape in their minds ; that under all the 
ferment and the fever of youth the character is slowly 
clarifying. To watch for such signs, to rejoice in them 
when we see them, and to give ojir hearty commendation to 
every act in which they come to light — this is the habit of 
all wise parents. 

But is there not a deeper reason for faith? Have we 
not the same reason that the Puritans had? If we have it 
not, who has taken it away from us? Are not these chil- 
dren of ours children of the covenant, as truly as their 
children were? If we are believers they surely are. All 
they who are of faith — sons of faith themselves — are 



36 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

blessed with the faithful Abraham. If a man has no faith 
in God for himself, he can, of course, have no faith for his 
children. But whoever has given himself to God, can rest 
in the covenant God has made with believers, in which 
their children are included. This covenant gives us no 
right to remit our own vigilance or relax our diligence ; it is 
forfeited by our faithlessness ; but when we meet its con- 
ditions ourselves by honest, faithful, self-denying endeavors 
to do the best we can for our children, then it authorizes us 
to rely on the silent, unslumbering, all-encompassing, victo- 
rious grace of God, to go where we cannot follow, to speak 
when our lips are silent, to rectify our mistakes, and mend 
what we sometimes mar, and finally, in God's own way. 
to bring our children into the paths of life and peace. And 
I am sure that we shall discharge all our duties to them — 
whether in warning or reproving or commending — far more 
wisely and helpfully to them, if we are upborne and made 
strong in heart by this good confidence. 

I have no more counsel for you to-night, my friends. 
and I am almost ready to ask your forgiveness for having 
volunteered so much. What right have I to instruct you'? 
Do I not know how deep is your parental solicitude, with 
what earnestness you are studying these problems night 
and day? And why should I assume to direct you? Many 
of you are well able to guide me. But I have 1 only re- 
sponded to to a request, several times repeated, in bringing 
these thoughts together; and I leave them with you, 
trusting that whatever truth is in them may be serviceable 
to you, and that your own good sense will GOrrecl any 
errors that I may have made. Defective we all are in our 
characters, mistaken often in our judgments ; yet the 



GOOD GIFTS TO OUR CHILDREN. 37 

Omniscient knows that we want to know how to give good 
gifts to our children. May his unerring wisdom teach us, 
and his gracious care abide with us and with our children 
evermore ! 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. 

Romans vni: 5. 

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but 
they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 

Not only in this verse, but in all this portion of the 
epistle to the Romans, the apostle states and reiterates the 
contrast, everywhere implied in his reasoning, between the 
body and the mind ; between the physical nature and the 
spiritual nature ; between the realm of force and the 
realm of freedom. 

They who are in Christ Jesus, he says, walk not after 
the flesh, but after or in obedience to the spirit. " The law 
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from 
the law of sin and death." " The minding of the flesh is 
death, but the minding of the spirit is life and peace." 

Whatever these words may mean one thing is clear, — 
the apostle does teach a radical difference between the 
physical and the spiritual natures of man. 

A theory which some philosophers in these days are 
trying to popularize, teaches that there is no difference 
between matter and mind ; that the acts and operations 
which we call mental or spiritual, and the acts and opera- 
tions which we recognize as physical, are all produced by 



JfO THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the same forces ; that the phenomena of mind and the 
phenomena of matter all belong to the same substance ; that 
physiology and psychology treat of precisely the same sub- 
ject ; that thought is a process of the same nature as 
digestion, only a little more subtle and refined. This denial 
of the fundamental distinction between the physical and 
the spiritual realms, this identification of matter and mind, 
which makes thought only a chemical function, and con- 
science nothing but a heriditary affection of the nervous 
system, Paul does not justify. In his philosophy nature and 
spirit are radically different in substance and in operation ; 
the, law of the one is the exact antithesis of the law of the 
other. 

This is the question that I now wish to consider. 
Which is nearer right, Mr. George Henry Lewes, the philo- 
sopher of Positivism, who suggests that mind and matter 
are only different aspects of the same thing — opposite 
sides, so to speak of the same curve, — or Paul the apostle, 
who insists that though they are brought into close relation 
in the human life they are totally different things? This 
may seem a deep and difficult question ; but it is surely a 
question of the utmost importance to every human being ; 
a question that must be answered before we can have any 
clear or consistent views of life here or hereafter. And 
because it is so important, I do not believe that it can be 
beyond the understanding of people of fair common sense. 
The great things of God are not hard to comprehend. 

For our first witness let us summon another philoso- 
pher. I read to you the words of Mr. W. T. Harris, spoken 
some time ago at the school of philosophy at Concord : 

"The world of nature, to which man is enslaved by his 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. J { 1 

bodily wants and necessities, is a world of selfishness and 
cruelty and suffering. The means of gratification for one 
body are obtained and used at the expense of another. The 
food, clothing and shelter for one body, being special indi- 
vidual things, cannot serve in the same time and in the 
same respect for another body. The law of natural things 
is the law of exclusiveness and selfishness ; when one 
person gets them all others are deprived." 

" The law of natural things is the law of exclusive- 
ness " — is not that a true statement? Does not every 
natural thing that grows or increases, grow or increase at 
the expense of something else? 

The rock is made of grains of sand ; its bulk was 
formed from the sediment at the bottom of the primeval 
oceans. The sand of the beach is worn from the rocks of 
the shore by the action of the waves ; it is pulverized rock, 
nothing else ; and by and by its loose grains may again 
cohere in compact masses. But what the beach gains the 
cliffs lose ; what the strata gain the sands lose ; the same 
matter cannot belong to both at the same time. 

The corn grows out of the earth, but only at the 
expense of the soil in which it grows. Every particle of 
matter that enters into its tissues it has taken from other 
substances. Perhaps it grows at the expense of other 
plants, that stand stunted and dwarfed under its shadow, 
and that cannot thrive because the corn has extracted the 
nourishing juices from the soil and absorbed the warmth of 
the sun ; but if it 'does not increase by robbing other plants, 
it must increase by taking from the earth the nourishment 
of its life. The soil is impoverished that the corn may be 
enriched. 



Jf2 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

Just so the body of the animal lives and grows at the 
expense of other living things. Every particle of flesh or 
bone that is added to the body of the animal is taken from 
some plant or some other animal. By digestion and assim- 
ilation, the body takes to itself the substances of other 
organisms ; only as other living things give up their 
separate being can the body live. 

That part of man which is simply animal — what Paul 
calls the flesh — grows, of course, by this law. Concerning 
this there is no dispute. All the philosophers and natu- 
ralists agree that the material part of man follows the law 
of all physical organisms ; that its life is fed by the sacrifice 
of other lives ; that man as an animal is one of the 
devourers, living and increasing in stature and in strength, 
only by consuming the fruits of the earth, or the flesh of 
the lower orders. 

The law of natural growth is the law of all movement 
or manifestation of physical power. Every force that is 
expended is borrowed. If force is communicated from one 
body to another, the one from which it proceeds loses just 
as much as the other gains. If I drive one croquet ball 
against another, the force imparted to the second one is lest 
by the first one. The wheels of the clock move round with 
a certain power, but the power with which they move is 
imparted to them by the uncoiling spring or the descending 
weight, and all the force that is in the wheels comes out of 
the spring or the weight. 

The fire burns the wood and the h*at thus produced 
contains a certain amount of energy; but it is only as the 
wood gives up the heat that was Latent in it that the fire 
burns; it is only in miracles that the burning wood is not 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. IfS 

consumed. The oxygen of the air and the carbon of the 
wood unite to produce the flame ; and whatever force is in 
the flame existed before the fire was kindled in the air and 
in the wood. 

The great physical law which the philosophers call 
the law of the correlation of forces, or the conservation of 
energy, governs all these changes in physical objects. That 
law, as Professor Clerk Maxwell states it, is in these 
words : 

" The total energy of any body or system of bodies is a 
quantity which can neither be increased or diminished by 
any mutual action of those bodies, though it may be trans- 
formed into any one of the forms of which energy is 
susceptible." 

Motion, for example, can be converted into heat, and 
heat into electricity, and electricity into chemical affinity ; 
the force is neither increased nor diminished in these 
changes. Every steam engine is an example of the conver- 
sion of heat into motion ; every hot axle is an instance of 
the conversion of motion into heat ; every machine belt 
from which the spark flies to the knuckle shows heat 
converted into electricity ; every building set on fire by 
lightning shows electricity converted into heat. The theory 
is that in these changes no force is gained or lost ; that 
what is lost by one form is gained by the other ; that force 
passes from one body to another, from one manifestation to 
another, but that it is only transmuted, not augmented, not 
annihilated. The energy that was just now exhibiting 
itself as motion, in mechanical work, has been converted 
into heat or electricity ; but there is no more energy noAV 
than there was before and no less. 



44 THINGS NEW AXD OLD. 

Whether, therefore, you consider the natural world as 
matter or as force, the same law holds. No new matter is 
created, and none is annihilated ; matter keeps changing its 
forms ; the same atoms that last year were lying as dust or 
mould in the lifeless soil, are this year taken up by the 
growing corn, and will next year be incorporated into the 
human body ; but there are no more atoms at one time than 
at another ; what one existence appropriates other exist- 
ences must give up. Nothing in nature can increase its 
bulk or its dominion without encroaching upon the sub- 
stance or the realm of some other existence. 

So no force can be increased without the conversion of 
energy from some other form. You can utilize force by 
contrivances but you cannot increase any force witout bor- 
rowing for it energy that is stored up in some other form. 
If you want to make your shafting move faster you must 
avail yourself of the energy of heat locked up for you in 
the coal. 

I need not dwell any longer on the illustration of this 
law of exclusiveness, which governs physical nature. The 
law of the transformation of energy is the scientific state- 
ment of it, and those who have small knowledge of science 
are familiar enough with the fact that in nature Whatever 
one creature gets all others are deprived of. When we are 
dealing with natural forces we clearly see that 

" The good old rule 
Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 
That he should £et who has the power 
And he should keep who can." 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. £$ 

And between the getters and the keepers the contest is 
deadly, because what one gets the other cannot keep. This, 
as our philosopher affirms, is the law of natural things. 

Now let us ask him lo stand up again and state to us 
the law of spiritual things : 

" The law of spirit is harmony and not mere conten- 
tion. All spiritual struggle must have reconciliation for its 
object. Recognition is the highest law of spirit. The equal 
shall look in the face of equal, and through mutual recog- 
nition each shall reinforce the other. Thus each is doubly 
strong; strong in himself and strong in his friend. * * * 
Combination is the great principle of spirit, and its forms 
are numerous in the practical world, and in the theoretical 
world as well." 

This statement will also be verified by your experience. 
The fact that recognition — or what I would rather call 
communion — is the highest law of spirit; that instead of 
contention and exclusiveness, we find harmony and co-oper- 
ation ruling in this higher realm, is a fact that everybody 
understands. 

You and I sit down hungry to a scanty meal. There is 
barely enough for one. If my needs are satisfied you get 
nothing ; if }^ou are filled I must go hungry ; if we divide 
the portion between us, each has only half as much as 
he could have were it not for the other. By all that the 
one takes the other's portion is lessened. You deprive 
yourself of what you give to me. 

But you and I sit down with eager minds to talk about 
some moral or spiritual truth. It is a truth known to me but 
unknown to you. You are the learner and I am the teacher, 
and in our conversation, you gain from me this truth. 



46 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

Is it mine any less than it was before? Have I deprived 
myself of anything in imparting to you this truth? On the 
contrary I have gained by giving. I have a stronger hold 
upon the truth than I had before I imparted it to you. It is 
mine in a deeper sense, by a firmer tenure than it was 
before, and it is worth more to me than it was before. 

You know that our knowledge is always confirmed, 
vivified, freshened, by communicating it.- What we have 
succeeded in clearly telling, we have succeeded in compre- 
hending. In putting it into a form in which it may gain 
entrance to other minds, we have put it into a form in 
which it will stay in our own minds. Thus the imparting 
of truth does not reduce but enlarges our store of truth. If 
I give a man my coat I have one coat the less ; but if I give 
a man my thought, I have not divested myself of the 
thought ; I have confirmed my possession of it ; it is less 
likely now that I shall part with it. Not only is the truth 
which I have communicated more truly mine than it was 
before I imparted it ; it is worth more to me. I have not 
only a stronger hold upon it, I have a greater joy in it. 
You, to whom I have imparted it, rejoice in it; and your 
appreciation of it deepens mine. Two faggots burn more 
freely than one ; and my enthusiasm in the pursuit and 
possession of this truth is rekindled when you take fire. 

It is not less true, let me say in passing, that truth 
grows in the mind itself by communicating it. Not only 
do the mental powers, like the bodily powers, gain strength 
by exercising them ; there is a kind of increase here to 
which the body affords no analogy. The most productive 
mind is the most prolific mind. Soil is impoverished by 
cropping it; but there is no such thing as exhausting the 



NATURE AXD SPIRIT. Jfl 

mind in this way. Production fertilizes the intellect. It is 
when the mind is paying out its wealth most lavishly that 
its revenues are largest. The days when I am doing the 
most mental work are the days when my mind is fullest of 
thoughts ; when there is the keenest delight in mental pro- 
duction ; when ideas come in crowds, like doves to the 
windows ; when subjects open on every side and invite to 
fuller investigation. The notion is sometimes entertained 
that the mind which produces freely is liable to run out of 
ideas ; but that is a notion which no mental worker enter- 
tains. It is true that the body, with which the mind is so 
closely related, may be exhausted ; but the mind itself 
enlarges its resources by expending its resources ; is 
fertilized by its own harvests. 

Other spiritual gifts besides knowledge follow in their 
growth the same law. Hope is increased by imparting it. 
If I have strong confidence in the success of any enter- 
prise, and if I succeed in inspiring others with my confi- 
dence, it is not at any expense to my own expectation. It 
is not true that I become less sanguine as they become 
more sanguine. On the contrary the assurance that they 
feel reacts upon me and strengthens my assurance. Every 
one knows that a hopeful temper is contagious ; and as 
other spirits catch the contagion the one from whom it goes 
forth does not lose heart, but feels his own confidence 
increasing. 

The same thing is true of courage. A brave man in- 
spires others to heroism, but his own courage is not dimin- 
ished when it enters into other souls ; it is stimulated and 
invigorated. 

The same thing is true of the one central element of 



48 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the spiritual life, love — the love that is the fulfilling of the 
law. Your power to love is not diminished by loving, any 
more than your power to know is diminished by knowing. 
The good-will and kindness that is in you begets good will 
and kindness in all with whom you have to do, but your 
own store of affection is not lessened, it is increased when 
you thus dispense it. You go out in the morning, and, fol- 
lowing the example of Him whose name is love, you 
endeavor throughout the day to do good to all as you have 
opportunity ; you cheer the hopeless, you help the helpless, 
you feed the hungry, you bear the burdens of the sorrowful : 
by gracious words and considerate silence, by brave resist- 
ance of wrong in public places, and by secret ministries in 
which the left hand knows not the right hand's doings, you 
seek to serve and hearten and bless your fellow men ; and 
when you come home at eventide it is written of you in that 
book where the good deeds are all recorded, that some heavy 
hearts are lightened ; that some paths are smoother for 
weary feet ; that some spirits encased in sullen hate and 
suspicion have opened just a little to let love in ; that the 
flowers that always spring where the beautiful feet of God's 
messengers have fallen are blossoming along the way that 
you have trod ; and now, having given forth so much as 
this of love to those who needed love, are you any poorer 
than you were in the morning? Is your store of affection 
diminished? Have you any less capacity for loving? Arc 
your sympathies narrower or your impulses of service 
weaker? Oh no; this power like all the other spiritual 
powers is replenished not wasted by using it : this endow- 
ment of a loving nature, like every other spiritual endow- 
ment multiplies as you share it with your fellow-men. 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. Jf9 

We say sometimes in our prayers that God is not im- 
poverished by giving nor enriched by witholding. That is 
true of Him because He is a spirit, and because the law of 
his nature and of his action is a spiritual law. But man 
is a spirit also ; and the saving is therefore true of man, as 
it is of his Maker. By giving man is not impoverished, — by 
giving spiritual gifts ; by giving that which is the substance 
of his manhood. A man's temporal possessions may some- 
times be diminished by bestowing them, but the man's true 
self is not depleted, it is enlarged by every energy that goes 
forth from it, by every bounty that it dispenses. " There is 
that scattereth and [thus] increaseth" is the primal law of 
the spiritual life. 

Have we not verified the doctrine taught by the Con' 
cord philosopher? And in doing so have we not found the 
strongest reason for believing with Paul that there is a 
radical difference between the physical world and the 
spiritual world? Is not the law of the natural life and 
growth the law of exclusiveness? Is not the law of spir- 
itual life and growth the law of recognition or communion? 
Is not the law of the members thus the exact antithesis of 
the law of the mind? Do not the body of man and the 
spirit of man belong to different kingdoms? Is there not a 
higher nature in man which is not subject to the law of the 
conservation of energy and of which plrysical science knows 
absolutely nothing? And is there not, therefore, reason for 
believing that the death of the body which is under phys- 
ical law, is not the death of the higher nature, which is not 
under physical law ; that the spirit of man may continue to 
exist after the body has ceased to exist? 

Man is not wholly mortal, but neither is he wholly 



50 THINGS NEW AXD OLD. 

immortal. He is flesh as well as spirit. He has interests, 
activities, pursuits that bind him to the lower realm. He 
must, sometimes, mind the things of the flesh. None of 
of us is a disembodied spirit, and it is needful for us to 
supply the wants of our lower natures as well as of the 
higher. But it is the higher nature that makes a man a 
man ; the lower nature he shares with the other animals. 
And the crucial inquiry respecting every man is : In which 
of these realms of life does he chiefly live? Is his ruling 
love given to the things of the flesh or to the things of the 
spirit? If the former is true of him, then the law of his 
nature is the law of the lower realm — the law of competi- 
tion and conflict, the law of exclusiveness and warfare. The 
things on which his heart is chiefly set are things which he 
can only have by depriving his fellows. By as much as he 
is enriched the rest of the world is impoverished. The very 
condition of his life is warfare, and the warfare into which 
his ruling choice enlists him is fierce and fatal : sooner 
or later the devourers themselves must be devoured. The 
minding of the flesh is death. 

It is a sad and bitter life that any man loads who sets 
his chief affections on the possessions and goods of the 
material world; on things that can be bought with money. 
Because he is a spiritual being his ruling choices ought to 
take a higher range than this. The things that are really 
highest in his experience, that belong to him as a man. that 
distinguish him from the beasts, are the things whose law is 
not exclusiveness, but communion. The gains that are 
most precious to him are those that fall to him while he is 
enriching others. All the highest good of life is good for 
which there can be no competition ; the real wealth of man 



NATURE AND SPIRIT. 51 

is wealth that cannot be monopolized. There never can be 
a corner in the market in which he gets his highest gains. 

It is quite possible for man to carry this spiritual force 
that is in him clown into the lower realm, there to subjugate 
the devourers. It is possible to substitute the principle of 
communion and combination for the principle of competi- 
tion in the getting and the using of material things. That, 
indeed, is the very law of progress in civilization. The race 
goes on and up from that which is lower to that which is 
higher by competing less and combining more. And the 
thousand wars of old will never cease, and the thousand 
years of peace will never come, till men stop putting their 
trust in the methods of competition and begin to build the 
whole fabric of their industrial and social life on the prin- 
ciple of co-operation — till they walk no longer after the 
flesh but after the spirit. 

That day is yet a long way off. It will not be hastened 
by disputing or by fighting, or even by legislating, any 
more than the growing of the grass in the spring will be 
hastened by firing cannon over your lawn or marching 
troops across it, or making speeches to it. But you and I, 
in our time, can have something of the light and glory of it 
in our homes and in our lives, if we will only treasure the 
truth we have found to-day. what gains there are for 
us in these divine pursuits and services — gains by which 
no mortal loses — gains by which we may enrich instead of 
despoiling our fellows ! 

•The quickening and inspiring truths that God gives us, 
how full of life and power they will become as we impart 
them unto others ! The hopes that lift our hearts and spur 
our footsteps, how they will grow within us, as we lead 



52 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

others to partake of them ! The joy that brightens our 
lives, how much keener it will become when other faces 
beam with it? The love that is shed abroad in our hearts 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, oh, how its sacred flame will 
glow and mount when we see it shining out of the eyes 
of our fellow-men and sanctifying their lives ! 

" I said it in the meadow path, — 

I say it on the mountain stairs ; — 
The best things any mortal hath 

Are those which every mortal shares. 

" The air we breathe, the sky, the breeze, 
The light without us and within, 
Life, with its unlocked treasuries — 
God's riches — are for all to win. 

" The grass is softer to my tread 

For rest it yields unnumbered feet ; 
Sweeter to me the wild rose red 

Because she makes the whole world sweet. 

" Into your heavenly loneliness 

Ye welcomed me, solemn peaks ! 
And me in every guest you bless 

Who reverently your mystery seeks. 

" And up the radiant peopled way 

That opens into worlds unknown. 
It will be life's delight to say, 

' Heaven is not heaven for me alone.' 

" Rich through my brethren's poverty? 

Such wealth were hideous ! T am blest 
Only in what they share with me, 
In what I share with all the rest. 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 



Revelations xi: 12. 

"And they heard a great voice from heaven, saying unto them, 
Come up hither." 

The fact that the Scriptures are addressed to the imagi- 
nation and feeling quite as much as to the logical faculty, is 
a fact now beginning to be more clearly apprehended than 
formerly ; and the discovery is the source of the most fruit- 
ful developements in religious thought. There is no need 
of denying that there may be exact and scientific statements 
of truth in both the Testaments ; but it does need to be af- 
firmed that feeling is oftener addressed than the intellect ; and 
that the terms in which truth is conveyed are more usually 
terms of figure or symbolism. This poetic use of language 
becomes more and more apparent the longer we study the 
sacred Word. Metaphors are discovered not only in the 
nouns and verbs — the substantive words of the language 
— but even in the particles of speech by which these more 
important words are bound together. Take, for an example, 
the preposition up contained in the text ; this is a metaphor, 
and as such is full of rich meaning ; but it has been ac- 
cepted in days past as a literal expression of truth, and 



5Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

has given a dogmatic direction to the theories men have 
believed about the heavenly world. The great voice from 
heaven said, " Come up hither ! " And by giving to the 
word up its natural or physical signification, the popular 
idea grew that heaven was somewhere in the sky or above 
the sky. That conception might have answered well 
enough under the Ptolemaic cosmography ; but when Co- 
pernicus came, it was speedily upset. As soon as it was 
known that the world is a sphere, and turns on its axis 
once a day, it became evident enough that any literal inter- 
pretation of the word would involve us in absurdity. 
Up is one direction now, and twelve hours from now it will 
be in the opposite direction. Every moment the zenith 
changes ; and the course that is upward to us is downward 
to our antipodes. 

Yet you know how sturdily men stood up in the early 
times for the literal sense of this word, and of words akin 
to it. When the astronomers began to teach the heliocen- 
tric doctrines, men were angry and amazed. Science was 
determined to overthrow the Bible, they said ; if you allowed 
these new fangled notions of astronomy, you made nonsense 
of the Bible. Science was the foe of religion ; the men who 
could teach such theories must be plotting to undermine 
faith ; their motives could only be bad ; they must be dealt 
with sharply, lest their infidel notions spread. All this dis- 
tress arose from a failure to recognize the truth that the 
preposition up, and all the other words of space applied to 
the relation between heaven and earth are used poetically, 
and not scientifically; that prepositions and adverbs, as 
well as other words, may sometimes be figures of speech. 

Not a little of the fierce controversy that has wasted 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 55 

the church in days gone by has sprung from this determi- 
nation to hold words down to a physical or logical sense. 
By insisting on the letter that killeth not only has the 
meaning of the word itself often been destroyed, but the 
phrase has had a far more sanguinary fulfillment ; for this 
hard fierce literalism has burned and strangled- many a true 
child of God who would not assent to its frigid and jejune 
interpretations. 

No argument is needed to show that the word up is 
used in the text and wherever in the Scriptures it describes 
the relation of heaven to earth, in a figurative and not in a 
literal sense. Where heaven is we do not know. The spec- 
ulations about it have been more ingenious than satisfactory. 
All attempts to locate it anywhere in space are fanciful and 
without foundation in reason. Yet I do not suppose that 
the use of this preposition in this place is without meaning. 
If it is a metaphor it signifies something. 

The truth is that between physical and moral relations 
there is often a close analogy. The physical world in which 
we live is the type of the world to which we are going ; the 
conditions of being, the relations of matter in which we are 
practised here — motion, rest, distance, nearness, weight, 
buoyancy, power, resistance, birth, life, growth, death — 
all these are physical ideas ; yet we cannot talk about 
spiritual or heavenly things without employing these terms ; 
and they were meant to be used by us in this way ; to pass 
from the vocabulary of matter to that of spirit and be 
•employed there poetically, to suggest to us important ideas 
concerning the spiritual life. There are some spiritual ideas 
in conceiving of which physical analogies do not help us ; 
and there are some spiritual laws that are exactly anti- 



56 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

thetical to some physical laws ; nevertheless the two realms 
are often brought into the closest relation, and we find a 
marvellous parallelism existing between them. So when 
the conception is given to us that heaven is above us, that 
it is by ascending that we reach it, a most valuable idea is 
communicated to us. 

The word heaven itself embodies the same conception, 
if we look at its etymology ; it comes from the verb to 
heave — something heaved up or elevated — as the top of a 
hill or the roof of a temple. 

Of course the essential excellence of heaven consists in 
the moral purity and perfection of which it is the home. 
And between moral purity and perfection and physical 
elevation there seems to be a constant and, perhaps, a neces- 
sary relation. Perhaps the human mind is so constituted 
that it will associate these ideas. Perhaps it is inevitable 
that words which describe the ascent and the altitude of 
bodies should also be employed to describe the advance- 
ment and perfection of spirits. It is certain that in quite a 
number of languages words of physical altitude are always 
used figuratively to describe moral and spiritual excellence. 

This fact is worth noting, because we are not always 
aware that when we seem to be speaking in the soberest 
prose we are often using words poetically. ^Ye talk of the 
higher life, meaning, of course, the purer and better life ; 
but when we speak of the higher life our language convoys 
to our own minds and to the minds of those who listen a 
stronger meaning than if we called it simply the better life. 
We describe one whom we know as possessing a lofty spirit, 
as governed by an elevated purpose, as having a high 
standard of conduct; and there is something in these 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 57 

adjectives that intensifies the conception we are tr}dng to 
express. The analogy between physical height and moral 
excellence is most clear and vivid. 

We go down into cellars and dungeons, into caverns 
and morasses, into sloughs and pitfalls, into floods and 
depths of ocean. A great part of our physical discomforts 
and dangers are encountered in going down. We go up to 
solid footing, to pure air, to wide prospects ; many of our 
more pleasurable sensations are the result of ascending. 
Confining our thoughts to physical relations it is easy to 
see that up is a pleasanter preposition than clown. And as 
moral and spiritual deterioration is alwaj^s accompanied by 
discomfort, it is natural that we should figure it to ourselves 
as a downward movement ; and on the other hand because 
moral and spiritual improvement are always accom- 
panied by happiness and comfort, it is natural that we 
should liken them to an upward movement. So subtly 
interwoven in all our plainest speech are these great facts 
of the moral order. 

We see now that this preposition perfectly expresses 
the relation of heaven to earth. The elevation is moral not 
physical. It is because so much of safety and beauty and 
glory are associated in our minds with ideas of physical 
altitude that these ideas are taken as figures to suggest the 
safety and beauty and glory of heaven. 

The voice from heaven which says, "Come up hither," 
means to us a great deal, then, though we know that the 
zenith no more nearly than the nadir is in the direction 
of our heavenly home. It means, Come up out of the fens 
and quagmires, out of the cellars and the dungeons, out of 
the miasma and the darkness — up to the heights where the 



58 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

sun always shines, where the air is always pure and sweet, 
where the eye sweeps a wide horizon that girdles fertile 
plains and shining lakes and winding rivers and glorious 
summits. 

" It is only a figure, then," somebody may say. That 
is as if one should stoop to pick up a pebble and should 
exclaim, as he held it in his hand, " Only a diamond ! " 
How much more rich and precious is the figure than any 
mere literalism could be ! Suppose that when the voice out 
of heaven was heard it must be understood literally as 
meaning that heaven was up above the earth, somewhere in 
the sky, so that one could find it by following a line drawn 
perpendicular to the plane of his horizon, what would that 
signify ? But when the word is permitted to lie in the 
thought, with all its own beautiful suggestions, how fruitful 
it is of stimulating and enriching thought. No ; when we 
give to the words of the Bible that have long been harped 
on and quarreled over as literal dogmas, the poetical mean- 
ing that belongs to them, we are not robbing them of power, 
we are restoring to them the wealth of which they have 
been robbed. These words are like windows ; but those to 
whom they have been given, forgetting that the chief use of 
the window is to furnish entrance for the light and outlook 
for the eye, have too often busied themselves with measur- 
ing and polishing the window frame, or studying the flaws 
in the glass, or trying to adjust and reconcile the slight 
aberrations or distortions caused by the defects in the glass. 
or endeavoring to make out that the dirt and fly specks and 
coal smoke that will, in the best climates of this world, 
sometimes lodge on the windows that look toward heaven, 
are all divinely inspired. How much better it would be to 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 59 

look through them sometimes to discover the glory upon 
which they open. 

"A man that looks on glass 
On it may stay his eye ; 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And then the heaven espy." 

shallow dogmatist, knowest thou not that these word- 
windows that thou spendest thy life scanning and scouring 
and quarreling about, and that thou breakest, not seldom, 
in thy fierce controversies, will give thee, by day, a vision of 

"All the pomp that fills 
The circuit of the summer hills," 

and by night the glory of Orion and the sweet influence of 
the Pleiades ! 

We conceive of heaven rightly both as a state of being, 
and as a place of residence. These two conceptions belong 
together, and must not be divided. Some persons are 
inclined to part them, and to put the whole emphasis of 
their teaching upon one or the other of them. There are 
those to whom heaven is nothing but a place — a beautiful 
country or a shining city, or a good palace. Their imagi- 
nations fasten upon the physical representations of heaven 
which the Bible contains, and their thoughts go no further 
than these. Of course they know that we must be good in 
order to go to heaven, but the truth that being good is 
heaven, is a truth that they see as through a glass darkly. 
Goodness is, in their view, only the ticket that lets them 



SO THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

into this garden of delights ; it forms no essential part of 
the garden's delightsomeness. 

On the other hand, there are those who insist that 
heaven is nothing but a state ; who speak lightly of the 
cravings of the soul for a place of rest and comfort by 
and by. Holiness, purity, love, these are heaven, and these 
are the only heaven that they believe in. 

Now while it is true that the heavenly state is the main 
thing ; while the moral and spiritual condition of men is 
of more importance than the homes they live in, whether 
on this side the grave or the other ; while the first question 
ought always to be, What am I ? and not, Where am I to 
live ? yet it is practically impossible for most of us to 
conceive of an existence without conceiving of some 
locality in which the existence is. To imagine a pure spirit, 
a spirit apart from some sort of body or organism, is more 
than we can do. And when we imagine the body, though 
we may call it a " spiritual body," and suppose that by this 
phrase we have got rid of material ideas, we shall be 
compelled to imagine a place in which the body dwells, or 
through which it moves. We ourselves are embodied 
spirits, and if there be any disembodied spirits we have no 
conception of what their manner of life is. Organs of some 
kind our souls must have in the life beyond ; it doth not 
appear what we shall be, but it is probable that we shall 
appear; and if we do appear we must have some form of 
appearing; and a form of appearing implies a limitation of 
space, that is a place. 

So I say it is simply impossible to cease thinking 
of heaven as a place. We cannot have any definite knowl- 
edge of that place; but we can have and must have concep- 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 61 

tions, imaginings about it. We shall picture it to ourselves 
now and then ; we shall take all our best ideals of beauty, 
and comfort and blessedness, and combine them in our 
thoughts to make up our ideal of heaven. The Bible 
piques our imagination with hints and suggestions and 
parables and pictures, and then leaves us, each for himself, 
to complete the representation. If we begin to turn our 
fancies into dogmas, and to call upon our neighbors to fall 
down and worship the images of heaven we have set up, 
then we do wrong ; but if we hold them only as symbols, 
only as the dim outshining of a glory not yet revealed, only 
as helps in conceiving of something better than the eye 
has ever seen or the fancy ever painted, then they may 
strengthen our faith and stimulate our hope. 

Holding, then, both these conceptions of heaven in our 
thought, let us listen to the great voice out of heaven saying 
unto us, " Come up hither ! " 

Heaven as a state is not beyond the reach of those who 
dwell upon the earth. Heaven came down to earth when 
Christ came. It had always been coming, indeed ; but 
there was more of it here when he came than ever before. 
That which makes heaven — the substance of that which 
we hope for — is here already. The announcement of the 
Saviour's coming by the Forerunner — what was it? "The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." So Christ himself to theo- 
logical speculators and curiosity hunters gave warning : 
" Neither shall ye say, Lo here ! or lo there ! for behold the 
kingdom of God is within you ! " 

There is an upper and a lower realm of life here in this 
world. Some of us live almost wholly in the one, and some 
almost wholly in the other, and many vibrate between the 



62 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

two. The boundary between them is a line invisible to 
mortal sight, but the two worlds are to the eye of God as 
distinct as night and day. 

The Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is a little world by 
itself. All its phenomena, all its forms of life differ 
strangely from those which appear on the surface a little 
way above. Darkness and not light is lord of its cheerless 
solitudes ; from the fretted arches of its roof hang weird 
fantastic forms of rock fashioned by the drip of centuries ; 
no flowers bloom, no herbage rustles within its dismal 
grottoes, but mocking shapes of stone spring up, tree-like, in 
its lifeless gardens ; its rivers roll with sullen flood through 
cavernous labyrinths, and fall with dreadful reverbera- 
tion into fathomless abysses ; the fish that inhabit them — 
the only living creatures in the cave — are eyeless monsters 
that have no need of the sun. Contrast with this dismal 
grandeur, this clammy breath, this lifeless silence, the free 
glad life of the fields and the forests above, lit by the sun- 
shine, decorated by ten thousand shapes and hues of green 
things growing, vocal with winds and hirds, and lowing 
kine and the sweet music of human speech, and you have 
some faint symbol of the difference there is between the 
nether life of flesh and sense, and the upper life of heavenly 
inspiration, both of which are open to you and me, now 
and here. 

There is a life that springs from the earth and that 
clings to the earth; a life whose central motive is appetite 1 
or passion, or some form of selfishness a little more refined ; 
a life that is ruled by material ideas and forces: a life 
whose maxims and methods are all earthly and sordid. To 
get a living ; to get money; to get sensual gratification in 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 63 

one form or another : to get fame and power and patronage ; 
to get from my children or dependants the homage of a 
slavish fear; to get all my whims gratified, and my self-hood 
ministered unto by all around me ; to get as much as pos- 
sible for myself, and to give sparingly whether of money or 
favor unless I can clearly see that it is coming back to me 
with usury — this is the principle of the lower life. Some- 
times animalism predominates in it, sometimes restheticism, 
sometimes ambition, sometimes tyranny ; all the same it is 
the exaltation of the lower parts of our nature ; it is the life 
whose ruling motive is from below and not from above. 

There is another life that has its inspiration in heaven, 
and that lits us up toward heaven ; a life whose central 
motive is love ; whose source is the indwelling of God's 
spirit in the soul; whose streams are fed by constant com- 
munion with Him who is the life and light of men ; a life 
that enthrones the nobler faculties and makes the grosser 
nature serve the higher ; that holds the appetites in check, 
and subordinates material things to spiritual ; a life whose 
joy is found in giving rather than in getting, in ministering 
rather than in being ministered unto, in serving more than 
in ruling; a life upon which all men enter when they are 
born from above — when "the power of an endless life" that 
made Christ the Saviour of men comes down upon them 
and takes possession of them. 

These two realms of experience — the upper and the 
lower — lie close together, and both of them invite us b}^ 
motives of their own. There is that in us which responds to 
the solicitations of the realm of sense, and there is that 
in us which answers to the call from the spiritual realm. 
Unhappily many of us, I fear, spend most of our days down 



64 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

below. Our affections are set on things on the earth, rather 
than on the things above. Now and then Ave make an 
excursion into the heavenly realm, but we do not stay there 
long ; the serene peace which is the portion of those who 
take up their abode there we do not know much about. 

Yet we are perfectly certain that there is such a thing 
as living there. We know some who, while in this world, 
are plainly not of this world ; whose " conversation," as 
Paul said, "is in heaven." The fragrance of Paradise is 
in their garments ; the light of a new and better hope is in 
their eyes ; their voices are musical with the accents of 
heavenly love. A great multitude of these saintly souls — a 
multitude that no man can number — have walked with 
God upon the earth ; are walking here even now. In our 
streets we meet them every day ; our homes are cheered by 
their steady patience, their unswerving fidelity, their un- 
sparing sacrifices. Our eyes brim with grateful tears when 
we think of them — of the good they are doing us ; of the 
revelation which God has made of his own love through 
them to us ; of the call to nobler living to which their lives 
give voice. 

Nay it is not you who profess sanctification of whom I 
am speaking — not you who brag of your attainments in 
grace, and tell us the month and the day on which you 
ceased from sinning ; you who know that you are saints are 
apt to have a monopoly of that knowledge; nobody else 
would suspect it if you did not advertise it. It is not from 
your lives that this mighty influence comes that lifts us up 
toward the heavenly state ; but from those who in humbler 
ways are just bearing their burdens patiently and doing 
their duties faithfully ; Leaving with meekness their sins to 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 60 

the Savior and hardly daring to claim a place among the 
least of his disciples. Your thoughts go at once to some 
whom you know, who have many misgivings as to their 
right to be numbered among the children of God, for whose 
beautiful lives their neighbors are giving thanks daily. 

From the realm in which these gentle and noble souls 
are walking — the heaven of peace and truth and love in 
which they abide even here in the flesh — a great voice is 
heard saying, " Come up hither ! " Do you never hear it ? 
In the pauses of your daily toil, in the intervals of silence 
that sometimes divide the strife of tongues and the clamor 
of passions, does not this great voice — this commanding 
voice — come sounding down to you from the better world 
above, summoning you to a nobler life than you are living 
now ? It is not alone to you who are outside the church 
that this call is spoken ; it is spoken to all of us who 
are conscious of sordid aims and providing tendencies ; 
it is spoken to every one who is conscious that the law 
in the members still often prevails over the law in the 
mind. 

And what a mighty voice it is ! The power and 
majesty of Him who said, " Let there be light ; " the lov- 
ing tenderness of Him who called to the tired multitudes 
saying, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden and I will give you rest ; " the pleading pity of Him 
who on the cross prayed, saying, " Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do !" are mingled in its moving 
cadences. It is the voice of God, speaking in the strength 
and beauty of this wonderful universe, in the solemn invi- 
tations of His word, in the life and death of His Son our 
Savior Jesus Christ, in the silent drawings of His spirit in 



66 THTNGS NEW AND OLD. 

our hearts, in the faithful lives of all His true children, in 
all that we know or that the world has known of unselfish 
love, of unspotted purity, of unfailing truth, and calling us 
up out of the mire of earthliness and passion, out of the 
entanglements of frivolity, to the life of trust and peace 
and joy in Him ! If any man hath ears to hear let him 
hear ! 

But heaven is a place we said — more than one place, 
indeed. "In my Father's house are many mansions," said 
our Savior. The realms of the blest are no narrow region. 
Bounded they are, doubtless, and must be if finite beings 
inhabit them, but there is room enough and range enough 
to satisfy the most eager and venturesome spirit. And 
from these many mansions of the Father's house, where the 
redeemed are dwelling now, a great voice is heard saying to 
us, "Come up hither ! " 

It is the voice of many waters ; it is the voice of a 
great multitude ; it is the voice of harpers harping with 
their harps. We do not always hear it ; but, now and then, 
when we stand beside some open grave, or when at the 
Sabbath twilight hour vanished faces return, and the old 
loves are rekindled, and on the flowing tide of memory the 
old sorrows are borne in again upon our souls, the gates are 
set ajar for a moment, and " down heaven's stairs of stars " 
this melody of the heavenly host comes stealing upon our 
hearts with a most entrancing sweetness. It is the song of 
a great multitude, but, blending with the chorus, there 1 arc 
voices that are very familiar to our ears ; the low caressing 
tone of the mother whose lullaby was the first music we 
ever heard; the ringing accents of the brother who walked 
with us up the difficult road to manhood, and then sud- 



THE GREAT VOICE FROM HEAVEN. 67 

denly was not, for God took him ; the birdlike notes of the 
little voice that hardly framed itself to human speech 
before it joined in the song of the angels — all these we 
hear — oh so clearly now and then! — all the harps of all 
the seraphim can never drown their melody ; and all these, 
with the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne, and the 
hundred and forty and four thousand, are saying to us, 
" Come up hither ! " 

Surely it cannot be that a voice like this — so full of 
majesty, so full of tenderness — should call us, and keep 
calling, and still forever call in vain ! 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 

EPHESIANS I: 6. 

"He hath made us accepted in the Beloved." 

I wish to learn as much as I can about water : who will 
instruct me? There is no lack of instructors. At once 
they encompass me with their treatises — big books and 
little, tables, measurements, laws, pour in upon me in a 
flood : the hydrographers whose business it is to survey and 
describe all the surface waters of the globe ; the physicists 
with their manuals of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics ; 
the chemists with their analyses and their formulae. And 
there are many curious and wonderful things in all these 
scientific books that treat of water. The laws of specific 
gravity, of pressure, of flotation, of ocean currents ; the 
laws of evaporation and condensation, and congelation ; 
the chemical laws by which water is formed out of its 
elements — all these reward with a solid satisfaction the 
student who masters them. But after science has told you 
all it knows about water, how little you have learned of the 
power that is in it, of the beauty that clothes it, of the 
ministry that employs it ! Stand upon the cliff when the 
surf is pounding at its base, and the battle-lines of breakers 



70 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

are charging upon its muniments, and something of the 
majesty and might of water will be revealed to you that is 
not told in the books that treat of hydrodynamics. The 
river rolling through the meadows, glassing alder-thicket 
and wooded bank in its perfect mirror ; the lakelet, hiding 
in the forest, whose silvery stillness is ruffled by the wing 
of the screaming kingfisher, or broken into fairy rings by 
the leaping trout : the brook dancing down the cascade on 
the mountain side, or singing through the pastures ; the 
morning dew, glittering in myriad points of light on every 
petiole and grass spire ; the snow-flakes and the frost- 
traceries and the crystal architecture of the ice ; the 
clouds, overhead, that weave for themselves out of the 
abounding light such robes of marvellous color — all these 
can show us something of the beauty that hides in forms of 
water. 

And whenever on a sultry day of summer, or in the 
tossings of a fever, our thirst has been quenched by a 
draught of cool water, we have learned something about its 
value that it would be hard for any scientific man to put 
into a formula. 

That part of the function and ministry of this great 
natural element which science can subject to its classifica- 
tions and laws is, then, much less than the whole of it. To 
our sense of the beautiful and of the sublime, it speaks in 
most impressive language ; it awakens within us deep 
emotions; it addresses itself also in a most direct and 
effective way to our personal needs. The thirsty child who 
drinks of it, the weary spaniel that laves his heated body in 
its refreshing coolness, gain a sense of the good of water 
that the most learned scientist could never convey. 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 71 

The disparity between the scientific account of a thing 
and the real nature and value of it is seen not only in the 
natural world but in the moral world as well. Many of the 
highest human experiences have been compelled, in the 
social exigencies of our present state, to submit themselves 
to some sort of scientific analysis and statement ; and it is 
obvious enough that what is left out of such statements 
is vastly more than what is included. There are law books 
for example, that undertake to tell us the laws of marriage 
and parentage ; but how much can any one learn by 
reading those law books of the real bond that binds 
faithful hearts together; of the sacredness and sweetness 
of the affection that forms the foundation of the home. 

Between theology and religion the same disparity 
exists. The theological statement of a religious truth often 
comes as far short of giving us the real meaning of the 
truth, as the law books on marriage do of giving us the real 
meaning of marriage, or as the scientific treatises on water 
do of conveying to us an adequate sense of the real beauty 
and value of water. Theology is a science, religion is an 
experience ; and there are many things in our highest 
human experiences, especially those that grow out of our 
relation to God, for which it is not possible to find any 
adequate scientific statement. After theology has said its 
last and largest and strongest word about them, more is 
left unsaid than has been spoken. 

The doctrine of justification by faith, the central doc- 
trine of Protestantism as it is sometimes called, is, as it is 
often presented, a hard, dry, formal statement of a most 
precious and inspiring truth. The truth is in its very 
nature so full of tenderness, of affection, of the most sacred 



72 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and intimate experience, that it is quite impossible to put it 
into a formula. 

Let us imagine some doctor of the law going to the 
home of the prodigal after the feast was over, taking the 
father and the son aside, and questioning them, note book 
in hand : " A very remarkable and beautiful reconciliation 
has taken place here," he says : " the rebel against parental 
authority is pardoned ; the wanderer has returned to his 
home ; favor and plenty and peace have been restored 
to one who has long been deprived of them ; will you 
not have the goodness now to condense into a statement not 
more than five or six lines in length the real nature of this 
transaction?" The crude and stupid absurdity of such a 
proposition would be evident enough to all who have read 
the touching story. As if all the regret, the gratitude, the 
hopes, the fears, the doubts, the confidences, the anguish, 
the dread, the thankfulness, the peace of that deep human 
experience could be reduced to a logical definition ! And 
yet men undertake to put into concise theological proposi- 
tions the whole truth concerning the return of the sinner to 
the favor of God. 

"What is justification?" asks the Shorter Catechism. 
"Justification," answers the Shorter Catechism, "is an act 
of God's free grace, wherein he pardoncth all our sins, and 
accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the right- 
eousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith 
alone." 

That is the scientific definition of justification by faith, 
perhaps as good a definition as ever was framed. And 
it may help us a little toward a right understanding of 
what justification is, just as Weisbach's great books on 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 73 

hydraulics might help us a little toward understanding the 
ministry of water ; just as Bishop's two big volumes on 
Marriage and Divorce may throw some light on the nature 
of the family relation ; but he who depends on such a 
formulary as this for his knowledge of the way in which 
the sinner is restored by faith in Christ to the favor of God, 
must remain in profound ignorance of the whole matter. 

"The righteousness of Christ imputed to us," is the 
key phrase of this definition. And the conception is purely 
legal. We are under condemnation because we have broken 
the law. Christ, by his sufferings, has satisfied the law. 
Those who accept him as their substitute are freed from the 
law. His sufferings are substituted for ours ; his righteous- 
ness is legally reckoned as belonging to us, and thus we go 
free. " Justification," says Dr. Hodge, " is pronouncing one 
to be just, and treating him accordingly, on the ground that 
the demands of the law have been satisfied concerning himP 
The acceptance of the sinner is therefore due to a legal 
transfer to Christ of the penalty of his sins, and a legal 
imputation to him of the righteousness of Christ. 

This is the scientific account of what is sometimes 
called " the great transaction." Theological science reduces 
the tender history of the sinner's restoration to the favor of 
God to such a statement as this. It is plain that theological 
science, like every other sort of science, fails to include 
the deepest and best things in human experience. 

The words of the text, which bear upon the same 
subject, surely have a different sound, and put our thoughts 
upon a different track. " He hath made us accepted in the 
Beloved." This is not so dry a formulary ; it does not 
sound like part of a legal writ or rescript; it opens to 



74 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

us glimpses of a dearer relation than that of a bondsman 
in court or the endorser of a note. We will not imagine that 
we can compass this whole truth in any representation that 
we are likely to make of it ; but we will try to penetrate the 
phrases that have been hardened by much disputation, and 
find our way a little nearer to the heart of this great 
matter. 

In some way, it is clear, the New Testament represents 
God as accepting men through Christ. In some way Christ 
is regarded by the believer as his substitute. He is the 
Mediator between God and men. By faith in Him we are 
justified. These words meant something to the men who 
used them, and they ought to mean something to us. What 
is their meaning? 

They cannot, of course, describe any legal transfer ■ 
of moral qualities. Moral qualities cannot be legally trans- 
ferred from one person to another. My demerits cannot be 
lawfully transferred to another, nor can the merits of 
another be lawfully transferred to me. My guilt is my 
own, and can by no possibility be imputed to another being. 
Can any one else in the universe be blamed for a sin 
of mine in which he had no part? On the other hand it 
is equally impossible that I should be regarded as entitled 
to praise for a good act performed by another person, of 
which I had no knowledge, and in which I had no part. 
" Every one of you shall give an account for himself unto 
God." The entire and absolute personality of moral 
qualities, of guilt or innocence, of praise or blame, is the 
fundamental truth of morality. Any legal interference 
with this fundamental principle would be subversive of all 
righteousness. 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 75 

But it is said that though moral quality cannot be 
transferred, legal liability can be ; that though Christ 
cannot be morally guilty on account of our sins, God 
regards Him as legally responsible for them ; that though 
His merits cannot be legally transferred to us, God does 
consider us as blameless before the law on His account. 
We are justified because we claim Him as our substitute. 

Now there is under all these phrases a great truth ; and 
although the common method of explaining it may seem to 
impugn the justice and even the veracity of God, and 
represent Him as consenting to a fictitious and evasive 
legal operation, yet, if we take the whole subject out of 
court and strip it of its legal phraseology, we shall see that 
there is something real and precious in this act of God's 
grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved. 

Let me tell you a story that might happen, if it never 
did happen, in which we may get some hint of the principle 
here involved. 

John Goodman is a citizen of noble character and 
of large philanthropy. He has a son whom he loves as the 
apple of his eye, and who is justifying his father's affection 
by growing up into blameless manliness. One night a 
young desperado, the offspring of criminals, whose life has 
been spent among the worst classes of our cities, breaks 
into John Goodman's house, with the intent of robbery, and 
nearly kills his son. The father comes to the rescue, 
captures the young burglar, binds him fast, and waits for 
the morning, to deliver him up to justice. In the mean- 
time the son revives, and, seeing the youth of the criminal, 
is touched with pity for him, a sentiment that has already 
begun to kindle the father's heart. Before morning father 



76 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and son have resolved to make a great venture to save this 
wretched boy from his life of crime and shame. They tell 
him that if he will turn from his evil ways, he may have a 
home with them, sharing their comfort and their plenty ; 
that they will protect him, so far as they can, from the 
consequences of his past misdeeds ; that they will guard 
him from bad influences, and open to him paths of integrity 
and honor ; that he shall be recognized as an equal in the 
family, and shall be joint heir to the estate. All this 
is offered him by the father, and urged upon him, even with 
tears, by the son whose life he had attempted. Of course it 
is very difficult for the wretch to believe that these assur- 
ances are sincere. He thinks at first that they are mocking 
and taunting him, and his. lips curl with scorn and resent- 
ment as he listens. But by and by he perceives that they 
are in earnest, and he is overwhelmed by their marvellous 
goodness. He casts himself down before them ; he kisses 
their feet ; he tells them in broken words the story of his 
gratitude. 

And he does honestly try to live the better life toward 
which they seek to lead him. It is the deepest purpose of 
his life to be upright and faithful and pure. But, as any 
one might easily foretell, this is a purpose hard for such a 
boy to shape in act. He is indolent, and profane, and 
reckless by habit; his mind is full of gross and foul 
thoughts; his temper is untamed; his whole nature has 
been warped and corrupted by his early training. This 
ingrained evil finds expression in many ways. After a time 
the good man begins to despair of ever making anything of 
this unfortunate youth; he begins to regret that, instead of 
trying to reclaim him, he had not handed him over to 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 77 

the police. But while he is thus wavering in his purpose, 
he chances to enter the room of his protege, and there 
he finds upon the table a picture of his own son, soiled with 
much handling, evidently left in sight by accident — and on 
the back of it, in the rude hand-writing and doubtful 
orthography of the waif, these words written : " I want to 
be like him. I pray God to help me to be nearer like him. 
I'm far enough from it now, God knows ; but I watch him 
all the while, and try to live as good a life as he lives. God 
bless him for all his goodness to me ! " The father's eyes 
fill with tears, as he reads these simple words. He discerns 
in them the deep purpose of the poor boy whose faulty 
performance has so tried him. His heart cannot but be 
touched by the lad's choice of a hero. He knows that the 
choice is a worthy one, and he knows that the lad's love for 
his own son will have in it a regenerating power. He has no 
more misgivings concerning the wisdom of his attempt 
to save this lost one; and always after this he couples 
the lad in his thoughts with his own son ; and feels toward 
him something of the tenderness with which he regards his 
own son. Since the poor lad cherishes for the other this 
passionate friendship, since he takes the father's pride as 
his own ideal and pattern, how else can the father regard 
him? He is accepted in the beloved. 

Now this story does not completely illustrate the case 
we are considering ; no example, drawn from human 
relations, can perfectly set forth the relation of God to the 
sinner. Nevertheless this parable may help us to under- 
stand the sinner's acceptance with God through Christ. 
We who were aforetime disobedient, and alienated from 
God, enemies in our minds by evil works, are brought near 



78 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and reconciled by the great love that is shown us in Jesus 
Christ. But we are still far from perfect in word or thought 
or deed. And when we come into God's presence, with all 
our imperfections on our heads, how can we speak to him? 
what can we say to him? He looks on our lives, and sees 
in them innumerable faults and shortcomings ; what can he 
find in us to approve? 

Perhaps you say that even if there is nothing in us to 
approve God loves us, just as a mother will love her 
wayward and dissolute boy when there is nothing lovable 
about him. But the mother thinks there is something good 
in her boy ; she finds something to admire in his character ; 
she sees good in him, and ground of hope for something 
better ; and it is to this that her love fastens. And I 
suppose that it is not possible for the best human being — 
nor for the divine Being, in whose image all the best human 
beings are made — to love any creature unless there is 
something in him to love. Man's love may sometimes 
be blind, but God's love is not, nor is it irrational ; it does 
not delight in any soul unless there is something in that 
soul that is fit to be delighted in. 

We say that God loves sinners, the unthankful, and the 
evil ; that Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners 
to repentance ; and all this is true : but what he loves 
in sinners is not their sin ; and if there were nothing but 
sin in them, he could not love them at all. It is the 
possibility of something better that he sees in them on 
which his love lays hold. 

What is it, then, my Christian brother, that God sees in 
you when you present yourself before him, on the ground 
of which he accepts you? What is it that gives you 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 79 

boldness to approach him with your confessions and your 
petitions? It is not, I am sure, any works of righteousness 
that you have done. For though I would not use any 
exaggerated language in describing your character or your 
conduct, I know that you do not feel, when you present your- 
self before the throne of the infinite Holiness, that you have 
anything to boast of. You know, better than any one else 
knows, the deceitfulness of your own heart, the sin that 
mingles with your holiest endeavors. 

But you know, too, that you can say this : " I have 
taken Jesus Christ to be my Master and my pattern. To be 
pure as he is pure ; to be true as he is true ; to be brave and 
patient and loving as his life in the flesh showed him to be 
— this is my deepest and strongest desire. God knows how 
far I have come from attaining unto this, but he knows also 
that this is what I mean to be. And I trust that he will 
look, not on my poor performance, but on this perfect ideal 
at which I am aiming, and will hear my prayer and 
help me, not for what I am but for what I wish and try to 
be. 

u Besides he knows that there is in my heart, not only 
admiration for Christ as a pattern, but some measure, 
at least, of love for him as a person. His boundless love 
for all men, and for me, have awakened in my heart a 
response of love to him. I love him far less than I ought 
to love him ; but he knows that I do love him. And not 
only because of my desire to be like the Son of God, but 
also because of my gratitude to him and my affection for 
him, I trust that God will find in me, in spite of all my sins 
and shortcomings, something that he can approve and 
delight in. I hope that though I cannot be accepted 



80 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

because of my own merit, I may be accepted in the 
Beloved." 

Thus it is that Jesus Christ becomes the believer's 
substitute. He is our substitute, not judicially, but ideally ; 
not because our guilt is by any legal fiction transferred to 
him, nor because his righteousness is by decree of court 
transferred to us ; but because we take him by faith as 
our representative. And whoever does honestly and 
heartily choose Jesus Christ as representing both to God 
and to himself the character that he means to form, the life 
that he means to live, may know that God accepts him, and 
delights in him, and rejoices to help him. His actual 
performance may be very faulty ; but if this is his ruling 
choice, he is justified before God. 

In the words of another : " He who, when goodness is 
impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty 
to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself to it, — 
such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such 
a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and 
faithful instinct in him will place him above many that 
practice virtue. He may be rude in thought and character, 
but he will unconsciously gravitate toward what is right. 
* * * He who cannot know what is right can know that 
some one else knows ; he who has no law, may still have a 
master; he who is incapable of justice may be capable 
of fidelity ; he who understands little may have his sins 
forgiven because he loves much." 

This is the principle that underlies and vitalizes thai 
religious experience which we call justification by faith in 
Christ. We all allow that a man must be judged by 
his deepest and most dominant choices; if this deepest 



THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF PROTESTANTISM. 81 

choice lays hold on Jesus Christ, if we can truly express to 
ourselves the controlling aim of our lives by saying that we 
desire to be like Christ, then God, who knows what our 
controlling aim is, accepts us, though very imperfect in 
character and deed. This is what is meant by being " in 
Christ." We see in him the character on which our hearts 
are set; our hopes, our aims, our aspirations all center 
in what he is; our life — the very motive-power of it — the 
organic and formative principle of it, — is hid with Christ 
in God ; we seek to grow up into him, in all things, which 
is the head, even Christ. And therefore when we stand in 
the presence of God, oppressed with a sense of our own 
shortcomings and transgressions, we can still look upon 
him, and say, " Behold the Man ! That is the measure 
of the stature to which I desire to grow ! " And we know 
that the Judge of all the earth, who knows our hearts, 
accepts us, because this is our profoundest wish, and for- 
gives us graciously, and loves us freely. 

But some one will ask, " What is the need of a personal 
representative to whom I can point as embodying my 
choice and purpose? Why can I not as well make known 
to God in my own way my desire to live a pure and true 
life, and why will he not accept this declaration just as 
readily as he accepts my choice of Christ as my representa- 
tive?" 

Well, my friend, the ideal that you thus form and 
cherish ought to be the highest and most perfect ideal — 
that is plain. You would not venture to ask God to accept 
anything short of moral perfection. And do you think you 
can frame a better ideal of moral perfection than that 
which is given you in the person of Jesus Christ? Can you 



82 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

better describe the man that you want to be than by saying, 
"I would be like Jesus Christ?" If you cannot, then 
the wisest choice for you is to say just that. 

There is another reason why it is far better for you to 
take the living Christ as the representative of your life than 
to set up before yourself an abstract virtue and strive 
to attain that. Love for a person, ardent personal affection 
and attachment are far better for any man's soul, than mere 
dry following of rules and maxims. " No heart is pure that 
is not passionate." No man lives well who does not love. 
And in the personal bond that binds you to the living 
Christ is the strongest of all regenerating influences. By 
faith in him, by fellowship with him, you become partaker 
of his nature. 

If, now, I knew some one who by his sin had become 
alienated from God, who felt that he could not pray, 
because of the haunting consciousness of his offenses, and 
who wanted to be at peace with God, I would say to him : 
My friend, Jesus Christ is the way. Choose Him for your 
Master and Lord. Let him be your Representative, your 
Mediator, before God. Not by any theoretical or senti- 
mental preference, but with all the energy of }^our soul, 
commit yourself to him. Such a resolute choice as that 
will banish all the cold shadows of distrust and take you 
into the sunshine of God's favor. You will be sure that 
there is no condemnation for you because you are in Christ 
Jesus. When you identify yourself with him, you are no 
more a servant but a son, and God will send the spirit of 
his son into your hearts crying, Abba Father. You will 
know that you are accepted in the Beloved. 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 

Acts xvii: 27. 

" That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and 
find htm, though he is not far from every one of us." 

This is part of the speech of Paul on Mars' Hill to the 
Athenian philosophers. He has found among the many 
statues and idols with which the streets and groves are 
crowded an altar dedicated " To an Unknown God." This 
inscription he takes for his text ; and he tells the Athenians 
that the outreaching of their faith toward a deity whom 
they do not know is the best part of their religion ; that 
there is, indeed, as they have darkly guessed, a God 
immeasurably above all the divinities whom in their 
marbles and their bronzes they have tried to symbolize ; — 
an infinite Spirit, the Father not only of the Olympians and 
of the Greeks, but of all peoples and nations and languages 
that dwell on the face of the earth. Moreover that dim, 
prophetic vision of him which finds voice in this inscrip- 
tion, is itself the response to his call, for he hath made all 
men " that they should seek the. Lord, if haply they might 
feel after him and find him though he is not far from every 
one of us." This is the purpose for which he has made 



84 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

them. The instinct that leads them to feel after him is an 
instinct with which he has endowed them, and thus this 
inscription to the Unknown God is itself a witness to 
the existence of Him to whom it points, and the fruit of a 
germ planted by Him in the human soul. 

The phrase " to feel after," is an instructive phrase. It 
suggests to us, in the first place, that our approaches to God 
are made, largely by the aid of our spiritual instincts — the 
involuntary movements of our thought. We are impelled 
to search for him by our sense of want, by our craving 
for something that we do not possess, yet that we dimly 
know must exist. By these cravings the soul feels after 
God. 

I have lately found in President Bascom's treatise on 
Comparative Psychology some quotations that have greatly 
interested me from Mr. Darwin's volume on Climbing 
Plants. The book itself I have not seen ; but these extracts 
furnish me analogies that are instructive. The fact that all 
life comes from one Life-giver, and that the laws of the 
natural world often run parallel with the laws of the 
spiritual world is most beautifully set forth by these studies 
of Mr. Darwin. Therefore I shall let him preach to you 
this morning ; that is to say, the truth of God as revealed 
in nature and recorded by this naturalist shall be placed 
before you, that you may see in it, as in a glass, the 
reflection of truths that deeply relate to your own spiritual 
life. 

The first peculiarity of the climbing plant to which the 
author calls our attention is "the slow revolution, in a 
larger or smaller circle, of the upper extremities in search 
of a support." Just as soon as the tender stalk of the 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 85 

plant begins to lift itself up from the earth, the top of 
it begins to swing round, reaching out thus in all directions 
for something to lay hold upon and cling to. The petioles 
or leaf-stalks, the tendrils, and even the stem of the plant 
itself show a wonderful sensitiveness to touch, and when in 
their revolutions they are brought into contact with some 
firm object, they immediately begin to press against it and 
to twine round it. The tendrils and the petioles are the 
most sensitive, and they lay hold upon the object that they 
have reached with a firm grasp, and, if the form of the 
object permit, carry the whole plant round it, and bind it 
fast. 

Thus it is that the climbing plant feels after the strong 
support on which it must depend. The plant knows that it 
cannot stand alone ; it knows that it must have something 
to cling to ; and it begins to reach out after it just as soon 
as it begins to grow. I say the plant "knows;" and 
though that expression must not be taken too literally, 
yet there is in this instinctive reach for support something 
so wonderfully like many of our own instinctive mental 
operations that we cannot help seeing that all kingdoms of 
life are closely allied. As President Bascom says of these 
phenomena, "they all show an organic mastery of external 
conditions approaching that which we find in a more 
complete form in higher life." 

Do we not witness in these movements of the climbing 
plant something closely analogous to the outreachings of 
the human soul after God? The soul knows, too, that 
it cannot thrive alone, that it needs some Power stronger 
than itself to cling to ; and it always begins to feel after it 
if haply it may find it. Blindly, in the dark, the minds of 



86 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

men grope after this Object of their faith ; often it is only to 
them the Great Unknown, — 

" That which we dare invoke to bless, 

Our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt, 
He, They, One, All, within, without 
The Power in darkness whom we guess." 

In the jungles of Africa, in the ice fields of the North, 
these instincts stir in the hearts of men, and draw them 
toward Him in whom they live and on whom they ought to 
lean, and about whom the tendrils of their affections ought 
to cling. It is not the heathen alone who have this 
experience. You know what it means, my friend, no 
matter how irreligious your life may have been ; you know 
that your heart is often yearning for a good you have 
not got; that the sense of helplessness and dependence 
sometimes takes strong hold of you and forces from your 
heart the cry: "Oh that I knew where I might find him 
and lay hold upon his strength ! " 

" On another plant," says Mr. Darwin, " three pairs of 
tendrils were produced at the same time by three shoots, 
and all happened to be differently directed. I placed 
the pot in a box open only on one side and obliquely facing 
the light ; in two days all six tendrils pointed with unerring 
truth to the darkest corner of the box, though to do this 
each had to bend in a different manner. Six turret vanes 
could not have more truly shown the direction of the wind 
than did these branched tendrils the course of the streams 
of light which entered the box." 

The reason of this movement of the tendrils away from 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 87 

the light is not at first apparent, but a little thought makes 
it plain. The tendril is seeking an object to cling to; in 
the direction from which the light comes there cannot 
be any object ; if an object were there it would obstruct the 
light; the fact that the light comes freely from that side 
shows that no object is there, so the tendrils turn in the 
other direction ; the shadow is the sign of the presence 
of an object to which the tendril may cling; support is 
nearest on the side where the shadow is. That seems 
to be the logic of this movement of the tendril. What 
wonderful wisdom is here ! 

"But the analogy" — you are thinking. "How does 
this prefigure our spiritual relation to God? God is light, 
and in him is no darkness at all ; and we are saved not by 
turning away from him, as the tendrils turn from the light, 
but by turning to him." All that is true, in the sense 
in which it is spoken ; and it may serve to remind us that 
analogies, like parables, cannot always be made to go upon 
all fours. Nevertheless there is a deeper sense in which 
this analogy does suggest to us that spiritual truth of 
which we are in search. God is light, in one most im- 
portant view of his nature ; he is the source of all truth 
and of all beauty, and of all goodness ; but it is also true 
that clouds and darkness are the habitation of his throne. 
When it is said that in him is no darkness at all, the 
word darkness has a moral signification. It is meant that 
there is in him no deceit, no insincerity, no malignant 
hatred. His character is light, but there are many things 
about his nature that are dark to us and must be, because 
he is infinite and we are finite. There are depths of being 
in Him that our thought can never fathom. And it is 



88 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

precisely this transcendent greatness of His that our trust 
lays hold upon. We want a Power to cling to who is not 
only greater than we are, but whose greatness we cannot 
compass with our thought. We want a Friend who is able 
to do for us not only the things that we ask for and 
think of, but exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
think. A God whom we could comprehend, whose Power 
we could measure, we could not fully trust. And so it 
is that our faith turns away from the garish light of human 
wisdom toward the unfathomed depths of Deity. 

" I found Him, not in world or sun, 
Or eagle's wing or insect's eye, 
Nor through the questions men may try, 
The petty cobwebs we have spun. 

" If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
I heard a voice ' Believe no more,' 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the godless deep, — 

" A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part ; 
And, like a man in wrath, the heart 
Stood up and answered, 'I have felt.' 

"No, like a child, in doubt and fear; 
But that blind clamor made me wise ; 
Then was I as a child that cries, 
And, crying, knows his father near. 

" And what I seem behold again 

What is, and no man understands; 
And out of darkness came the hands 
That reacli through nature, moulding men. 1 ' 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 89 

And thus our analogy finds some verification even in this 
curious movement of the tendrils away from the light 
and toward the darkness. 

There is still another point of resemblance here which 
we may think of for a moment. The truth that it gives us 
may seem to contradict the one we have just seen, but 
it does not in reality ; it is only the other side of the same 
truth. The darkness is a symbol of God's infinity, of the 
veiling of his nature from our sight. But it is only, let us 
remember, by the help of shadows that we see. Where 
there is nothing but light there is no vision. Look directly 
at the sun and you can see nothing. It is when your back 
is turned to the sun that you see most clearly. There must 
be some combination of shade with light that we may 
be able to see anything. And this is one reason why our 
faith, like the tendrils, turns away from the full light. 
It turns not only toward the darkness that hides God's 
infinity, it turns also toward the shadow because in that 
something of his nature is visible. The shadow not only 
conceals, it also discloses. 

You cannot conceive of absolute deity. Your mind is 
dazzled when you look God in the face, just as your eyes 
are dazzled when you look the sun in the face. Infinite 
knowledge, infinite power, self-existent, unconditioned 
being — you cannot grasp these ideas. You must believe 
that there is such a God ; you need such a God to trust in, 
and so you feel after him in the darkness, by the out- 
reaching of your faith ; but you cannot see him by the 
intellectual vision ; when you try to gaze upon his per- 
fections you are blinded by the sight. And men have 
always found it necessary to learn what God is by looking 



90 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

toward the shadows and the types which he has given us. 
The human nature is a reflection of the divine ; and we can 
only comprehend God when he is revealed to us in the 
forms of the human life. This is the incarnation — it 
is God in the shadow. Our faith finds something here that 
we can take hold of and cling to. The adumbration of 
God in humanity meets the deepest need of the human 
soul. Thus it is not only toward the darkness that hides 
the Infinite but toward the shadows that temper for us the 
brightness of his glory that our souls reach forth. And the 
tendrils seem after all to have a lesson for us when they 
turn away from the light. 

Yet, though they seek the shade, they know what it 
is that they seek, and they are not deceived. " Knowing," 
says Mr. Darwin, u that the tendrils avoided the light, I 
gave them a glass tube blackened within, and a well black- 
ened zinc plate ; but they soon recoiled from these objects 
with what I can only call disgust, and straightened them- 
selves." Here we have not a likeness, but a contrast. For 
the human spirit is not always, like the tendrils of the 
climbing plant, unerring in its selection of the objects 
on which it will lay hold. Full often the tendrils of our 
desire touch and fasten upon that which defiles us ; and 
the faith that ought to bind us fast to God's righteousness 
and power, is entwined about some groveling superstition 
or some ensnaring sin. The plant obeys the impulse given 
to it by the divine goodness, and obeys it unerringly ; but 
man to whom the power of choice is given — a power that 
the plant does not possess, — abuses his birthright and 
clings to the corruptions of flesh and sense. 

"When a tendril," says our teacher again, "has not 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 91 

succeeded in clasping a support, either through its own 
revolving movement or that of the shoot, or by turning 
toward any object that intercepts the light, it bends verti- 
cally downwards and then toward its own stem, which it 
seizes, together with the supporting stick, if there be one." 
The aptness of this simile you do not fail to perceive. 
When those spiritual instincts of our natures that reach 
out naturally after God and goodness do not lay hold on 
that which is their normal support, they, too, are very apt 
to turn downward and inward, and to lay hold upon that 
self which it was their true function to bind to a firm 
support. Man ought to trust in and worship something 
outside of and above himself; it is his nature to go forth 
from himself in search of such an object to worship ; but 
sometimes his own perverse and wicked will checks these 
natural aspirations, and will not suffer them to fasten upon 
the Object to which they ought to cling. And when this is 
done the affections are apt to be turned backward upon self; 
the man comes to believe only in himself and to worship 
himself, and the character that is developed is a most 
unlovely product of egotism and selfishness. Alas for the 
man whose trust and hope are in himself alone ! 

"If the tendril seizes nothing," says this naturalist, "it 
soon withers away and drops off." There is a world of 
meaning in that trait of the parable. The tendril shrivels 
and dies when it does not find any support to cling to. 
The disused faculty perishes by disuse. And these instincts 
of our souls that reach out after God — these yearnings for 
his strength and his peace — may perish in the same way. 
The desire to know him and to love him and to serve him 
is extinguished in the breast, if we refuse "his service. It is 



92 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

possible thus, by simple, neglect, to destroy that part of our 
nature by which we take hold upon God. The extinction 
of the faith-faculty is not an impossible calamity. Of all 
calamities that could befall us this is the direst. How can 
the climbing plant climb when the tendrils have withered 
and dropped ofT? It must thenceforth grovel in the dirt 
and be trodden under foot of men. And how can the soul 
lift itself up, when all the faculties by which it takes hold 
on God have fallen into decay? From th-at hour its destiny 
must be corruption and death. 

Let us hear Mr. Darwin again : " Tendrils, soon after 
catching a support grow much stronger and thicker and 
sometimes more durable to a wonderful degree ; and this 
shows how much their internal tissues must be changed. 
Occasionally it is the part which is wound round a support 
which chiefly becomes thicker and stronger. I have seen, 
for instance, this part of a tendril of Bignonia aequinoctialis 
twice as thick and rigid as the free basal part." Is not 
this, also, true in the higher realm? The instincts of the 
soul that feel after God are wonderfully strengthened when 
they find him, and take hold of his power. Faith grows by 
exercise. The man who says, " Lord, I believe ! " — even if 
he must, because of the infirmity of his faith, say in 
the same breath, "Help thou mine unbelief!" — finds 
always that his power of believing increases while he 
speaks. 

"The tendril strikes some object," Mr. Darwin pro- 
ceeds, " and firmly grasps it. In the course of some hours 
it contracts into a spire, dragging up the stem and forming 
an excellent spring. All movements now cease. By 
growth, the tissues soon become wonderfully strong and 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 93 

durable." The very character and quality of the tendrils 
themselves are changed as they thus fasten upon their 
support, and perform the function to which nature has 
assigned them. And so it is with these spiritual faculties 
of ours by which we lay hold upon God. Our trust, instead 
of being a tender and fragile thing, grows firm and strong 
and holds us fast to the throne of God with a grasp that 
the shocks of change cannot break nor the storms of 
adversity loosen. 

One more quotation from this wonderful fable of the 
climbing plants must suffice us for to-day : " The tendrils 
and internodes of Ampelopsis have little or no power of 
revolving ; the tendrils are but little sensitive to contact ; 
their hooked extremities cannot seize their objects ; they 
will not even clasp a stick unless in extreme need of 
support ; but they turn from the light to the dark, and, 
spreading out their branches in contact with any nearly 
flat surface, develop discs. These adhere by the secretion of 
some cement to a wall or even to a polished surface. The 
rapid development of these adherent discs is one of the 
most remarkable peculiarities possessed by any tendril." 
I cannot help seeing in this wonderful provision of nature 
an analogy of that phenomenon of the spiritual life which 
we so often witness, by which those natures which have but 
little power of comprehending religious truth — of reaching 
round it and getting hold of it by their understanding — 
do yet lay hold upon it in a way of their own, and hold fast 
to it very firmly too. The Ampelopsis that climbs the wall 
of your church has no need of a ladder or a rope to climb 
by; its own little discs make fast to the wall, and hold 
it quite as firmly as if it were wound round a trellis. And 



94 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

so there are Christians whose faith does not seem to need 
the leading strings of logic or theology, but mounts right 
up by its own sure-footed intuition. And it is a blessed 
thing that those to whom the paths of philosophy are 
thorny, and the steeps of speculation hard to climb, may 
thus, by a simple and direct confidence in the Christ 
himself, who is to all who receive Him the Way and the 
Truth and the Life, ascend to the serene and tranquil 
heights of virtue. And doubtless it would often be better 
for us all if, instead of believing much about him, we would 
just believe on him, joining ourselves to him by a living 
faith, and trusting where we cannot see. 

Such then is our parable. Its meaning has been 
disclosed as we have told it, and I do not think you have 
failed to see the significance of its teachings. For one 
thing it brings us into a better acquaintance with those 
other creatures of God that we sometimes think have but 
little in common with ourselves, and makes us see how near 
of kin we are to the vines and the lilies and the grass of 
the field. In the story of their lives we see our own lives 
prefigured, and some new meaning is given to that bold 
parable of Paul in which he represents the whole creation as 
sharing with man in the degradation of sin, and toiling 
upward with him out of the bondage of corruption into the 
glorious liberty of the children of God. 

For proof of the existence of these instincts of the 
soul, that feel after God, if haply they may find him ; that 
impel you, often, in hours of darkness and unrest to 
acquaint yourself with him that you may be at peace ; that 
bear witness to you over and over again, telling you that for 
these things of life — these choices, these burdens, these 



THE PARABLE OF THE CLIMBING PLANTS. 95 

conflicts, these fears, you are not sufficient; that your 
strength needs to be supplemented by the strength of One 
who is almighty — for the existence of such instincts I need 
only go for proof to your own consciousness. You know 
what they are ; you have felt their gentle but powerful 
drawings in your own hearts. Toward the darkness in 
which the Infinite is hidden, toward the shadow in which 
He is disclosed, your desire often reaches out ; upon the 
sure support that you know is somewhere on that side of 
your nature your needs and your longings strive to fasten 
themselves. Is it true of any of you that these affections 
have laid hold of coarse and unworthy objects, or that, 
failing to find the Object to which they ought to cling, they 
have turned back upon yourselves, aggravating your own 
"selfishness?" Or have these instincts in any of your 
natures, through neglect or disuse, withered and dropped 
away, leaving you with no faculties by which you can take 
hold on the things that are above? God forbid that so sad 
a fate should overtake any of those to whom I am speaking 
to-day ! 

Remember this, that He after whom your desires reach 
out is "not far from every one of us." He is near enough 
to you to-day so that by faith you may join your life 
to Him, and rest forever upon his unfailing love. And 
remember, too, that though our grasp upon the everlasting- 
strength be frail at first, it strengthens as we cling ; as we 
hold, we are held ; all the experiences of life confirm the 
bond that joins us to him ; until at length we shall be able 
to join with Paul in that triumphant utterance : " For I 
am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor 
principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things 



96 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord ! " 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 

James in: 7-8. 

"For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in 
the sea is tamed and hath been tamed by mankind; but the 
tongue can no man tame : it is a restless evil ; it is full of 
deadly poison.' " 

The story is to]d of an ignorant but godly man who 
came in the ancient days when the Bible was not in the 
hands of the people, to one of the fathers of the church 
desiring to be taught the Scriptures. His first lesson was 
the thirty-ninth Psalm beginning thus : " I said I will take 
heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue." He went 
away and did not return for his second lesson. Many years 
passed before his teacher saw him ; and when they met the 
preceptor asked the pupil, " How was it that you never 
came back for further instruction in the word of God ? " 
" Because," was the answer, " though I have been trying- 
hard, I have not yet learned to keep the first verse that you 
taught me." He had found the taming of the tongue to be 
a task as difficult as James reports it to be. 

James, the writer of this epistle, was the brother of our 
Lord. Whether he was the son of Joseph by a former mar- 



98 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

riage, or the son of Joseph and Mary, or the son of Alpheus, 
and thus a cousin rather than a brother of Jesus we do not 
know, but he was certainly a near relative, and probably a 
member of the same household. Although most of the 
brethren of Jesus believed not on him, it would seem that 
this brother was his disciple, and as such had unusual 
opportunity of knowing not only the words but the spirit 
of the Master. At all events, this epistle of James, not only 
in the style in which it is written, making free use as it does 
of simile and natural imagery, but also in its vigorous 
ethical tone, in its persistent putting of conduct above every 
thing else, is more like the teachings of Christ as they are 
recorded in the first three gospels than any other part of 
the New Testament. This man — we should say at once, if 
we know nothing about his family record — this man has 
been with Jesus and has learned of him. 

The intense practicalness of Jesus as a religious teacher 
leads him directly to this topic of the taming of the tongue. 
Here he sees, what every man to whom behavior is a chief 
concern must see, one of the pivotal points of character. 
The religion that does not rule the speech is a failure and a 
fraud. " If any man among you," he says in another 
chapter, " if any man among you seem to be religious and 
bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this 
man's religion is vain." Hence James struck straight and 
hard at the vices of speech ; more than any other teacher 
except our Lord he emphasizes the evils that grow out of 
the abuses of this goodly faculty of man. 

The tongue, in the figure of James, is a wild beast that 
needs taming, fierce, reasonless, uncontrollable. A good 
part of the evils of life arise from its depredations. We 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 99 

will not pursue his figure for the present, but will try to 
make a catalogue of some of the more common forms of 
transgression and injury of which the tongue is the author ; 
of some of the kinds of tongues that need taming. 

First, of course, is the lying tongue. Of all the evils 
of speech falsehood is central and seminal. How many 
ways the skillful tongue has of lying I will not try to tell, 
— from the brazen utterance of the thing that is not, to the 
careful form of words that conceals instead of revealing the 
fact ; that conveys to the mind a falsehood, while literally 
stating a truth. It is useless to classify this devil's brood 
of lies ; their name is legion ; and despite the attempt to 
invent fine names for some of them they are all of a color ; 
or, if there is one kind of lie blacker than the rest, it is that 
kind which deals in insinuation and in the artful conveying 
of false impressions. 

2. Next to the lying tongue we must put the reviling 
tongue. The tongue that utters blasphemy, that lightly 
and wantonly discourses of sacred themes ; the tongue from 
which the oath and the ribald jest drop thoughtlessly ; the 
tongue that assails with brutal and abusive speech not 
only the Lord most high but men who are made in his 
similitude, — how many are there of these that fill the air 
we breathe with noxious forms of speech. The tongue that 
was made to bless with, men use to curse with ; the tongue 
that ought to utter words of reverence and words of praise 
and words of cheer and words of good-will becomes the 
utterer of withering scoffs and chilling execrations. How 
often, when we hear men talking, we are moved to cry out, 
" What a wild beast that tongue is ! who can tame it? " 

3. After the reviling tongue the foul tongue must be 



100 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

reckoned, — the tongue that is the channel through which 
the impurities of a bad heart discharge themselves; the 
tongue that deals in indecent and salacious speech. the 
poison and pollution that thus drip day by day from wicked 
tongues into untutored ears, bearing their curse along with 
them ! 

4. Next we think of the passionate tongue ; the 
tongue that hastens to give voice to the anger and the hate 
that arise within. Anger, the Latin poet said, is a brief 
insanity ; and when it begins to rage within the breast it 
needs to be chained and kept under till its paroxysm is 
past. But the mischievous tongue sometimes sets it loose 
and becomes its servitor — to hurl missiles of hot and 
stinging words right and left, doing damage that it is hard 
to repair. Not only to those against whom these angry 
words are flung is the damage done ; their reaction upon 
the one who utters them is even worse He who in anger 
gives vent to harsh or unjust or reckless words generally 
hurts himself far more than he can hurt any one else. The 
rememberance of this outburst either fills him with shame 
and humiliation, and thus lowers his self-respect, or else, in 
a foolish consistency, he goes on to make his conduct 
conform to this hasty utterance, — to be as spiteful or as 
desperate as he then rashly professed to be. Thus, often, 
the unbridled tongue commits a man to ways in which he 
never really chose to walk, and drags him along toward 
folly or sin. Is there not need that we should all learn to 
put a curb upon it? 

5. The sarcastic tongue is another kind that needs 
taming. Sarcasm has its uses, no doubt; in our warfare 
with incorrigible evil doers we must sometimes resort to it; 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 101 

but in the common intercourse of life it is scarcely more 
legitimate than the cudgel or the rapier. Yet we are 
tempted, many of us, to use it, too often. It lies near to 
our hands ; it is an effective weapon ; we can make some 
people wince, and some people tremble when we use it ; it is 
a great self-denial to refrain from using it. Nevertheless, 
it would be better for many of us to handle it much less 
frequently. A sharp and biting tongue is a dangerous 
instrument ; they are not wise who play with it. Keen and 
bitter words, albeit they are deserved, often rankle in the 
memory long after they are uttered. They hurt harder than 
blows and are harder to forget. Reproof may be often 
necessary, but a reproof, even a stern one, need not be a 
scornful and biting one. The arrows of sarcasm are 
barbed with contempt ; that is what makes them rankle so ; 
and contempt is a feeling that a good man cannot afford to 
indulge. Resentment, indignation, wrath, are sometimes 
holy feelings ; but contempt for any creature God has made 
is not a feeling to be cherished. Human beings may some- 
times behave themselves in such a way that it is hard for 
us to keep the feeling down ; but that is our business, to 
keep it down ; no word ought ever to give it utterance. 
And sarcasm is the utterance of it. It is the sneer in the 
satire or the ridicule that galls and wounds. 

Let us beware of the indulgence of sarcasm. It may 
sometimes be resorted to ; so may a club or a revolver 
be sometimes resorted to ; but we do not usually think it 
wise to employ them in our intercourse with those whom 
we wish to regard as our friends, nor with those over whom 
we hope to maintain a salutary influence. 

6. The scolding tongue is another kind that calls for a 



102 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

curb. Angn 7 and severe and constant complaints or re- 
proofs are not often wholesome to those who deal in them 
nor to those who suffer them. Doubtless it is sometimes 
hard to refrain from scolding. The temper is tried by the 
little vexations of life and out of the abundance of the 
provocation the mouth speaketh more than is meet. To 
keep from angrily chiding children and servants, and clerks 
and pupils and parishioners when they are disobedient or 
careless or negligent or wayward or unfaithful, takes not a 
little grace — more, I fear, than is vouchsafed to some of us. 
Reproofs must be spoken, but sometimes there are too 
many of them, and their tone is too impatient, or too harsh 
or too loud. Reproof must sometimes be severe, but it 
may be severe without being petulant. The scolding 
tongue makes great trouble in many homes, and takes all 
the vigor and wholesomeness from the discipline of many 
parents and teachers — turning it into a teasing and irrita- 
ting application, that rasps and blisters but does not cure. 
7. The flattering tongue is a tongue that needs the bit. 
The wickedness and mischief of flattery who can overstate? 
Honest and hearty praise is not to be avoided ; we do not 
have half enough of it. The sincere commendation of one 
who has done well is a means of grace to him ; it strengthens 
his purpose to do better. Many are toiling on, heartsick and 
hopeless, to whom such a word of recognition would be as 
cold water to a thirsty soul. When your children do well, 
praise them ; speak with moderation, with discrimination ; 
do not let your words be so extravagant as to kindle their 
conceit ; but let them see that you are as quick to recognize 
and approve the good in them as you arc to censure the 
evil. If your pupils or your domestics or your working 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 103 

people or your clerks are diligent and faithful let them know 
that you appreciate their endeavors. But this is not flat- 
tery. Flattery is either false praise, or praise addressed, 
not to the quality of our actions, so much as to our excel- 
lences of person or that which is external to us. To praise 
your child's looks, and so stimulate his vanity, that is flat- 
tery, a most nauseous exhibition of it ; and the tongue that 
indulges in it ought to be bridled. There are many such. 
But the worst kind of flattery is that which seeks to please, 
and so to entice, by artful and insincere praises. This is a 
species of lying, of course ; but it is a species so mean and 
dangerous that it needs to be singled out and denounced. 
How many base creatures there are who by the arts of flat- 
tery are beguiling the unwary to their ruin ! How many 
such flattering words are spoken in this city every day — 
words of admiration or esteem or tender regard that are 
false and deceitful ; the very slime of the pit is on them ! 
' k He that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his 
feet," says the wise man. Remember it, I pray you; and 
u meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips." And 
if, in your natural desire to please, you yourself are some- 
what addicted to the utterance of insincere and deceitful 
words of praise or admiration or personal interest, seek to 
overcome that fault ; it is a grievous one. 

8. The chattering tongue is another kind that needs 
restraint and discipline. It is a fault of many tongues that 
they talk too much. The nerves that connect the brain 
with the vocal organs are too active ; the communication 
between the mind that thinks and the tongue that utters the 
thought is too close. A thought can not come into the head 
without flying out of the mouth. A few people are too taci- 



104 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

turn ; a great many are too talkative. They talk so much 
that they cannot weigh their words ; they say many things 
every waking hour that were better unsaid. Such endless 
prattle is an encroachment on other people's rights. They 
who listen to it are defrauded. How much time is consumed 
in attending to words that are utterly destitute of thought, 
that convey no ideas and impart no benefits ! How many 
things we might have done that were worth doing, how 
many things we might have thought of that were worth 
thinking of, while we were listening ! But what is worse it 
is debilitating to the one who indulges in it. He talks so 
much that he has no time to think. The tongue runs so 
steadily that it gets a habit of running; it is a kind of 
physical habit ; it is almost involuntary. There are those 
who seem to me to talk much as one moves who is afflicted 
with St. Vitus's Dance, because they cannot help it. This 
irresistible impulse to talk calls for a constant supply of 
words, and in they go, to keep the hopper full, without con- 
sideration or order or judgment. Such a habit must have 
a constantly enervating effect upon the mind. The mean- 
ing and value of such a talker's words are as much depreci- 
ated as is the currency of a bank that resorts to an enor- 
mous over-issue. " Set a watch, God," prayed the 
Psalmist, " before my mouth ; keep the door of my lips." 
The trouble with some of these constant talkers seems to 
be that there is no door to their lips, nothing but a doorway. 
There ought to be a door, and it ought to be shut a good 
deal of the time, so that the mind within may have time 
to set its thoughts in order, and judge them and utter them 
with wisdom and deliberation. 

9. The last kind of tongue I shall mention that needs 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 105 

taming is the slanderous tongue. How great is the mischief 
of slander is indicated by the fact that far back in the dawn 
of history, when the law of morality was reduced to the 
form of commandments, this was one of the things singled 
out and ranked with murder and theft and adultery, as 
especially worthy of condemnation. Slander, in the strict 
meaning of the term, comes under the head of lying; but 
it is a kind of lying which, like its antithesis, flattery 
ought to be set apart for special censure. 

To speak evil of their neighbors is to some men and 
women a positive luxury. They enjoy a bit of scandal as 
they enjoy a delicious viand ; they roll it as a sweet morsel 
under their tongues. If they discover something to the 
discredit of man or woman or child, they can never refrain 
from repeating it. I confess myself unable to understand 
or interpret this propensity. Some explain it by saying 
that those who are so quick to circulate bad stories about 
their neighbors must be bad themselves ; that they want to 
drag everybody else down to their own level — but this is 
a harsh judgment. Many who are addicted to this vice of 
talebearing are, I am sure, in other respects worthy and 
blameless people. I know some in whom this is almost the 
only fault. They are honest and generous and helpful, but 
they will tell tales about their neighbors ; they will retail 
gossip. To make a grave in their own breasts for an inju- 
rious rumor ; to refuse to credit or to lend currency to a 
mischievous story — this is a thing which they are incapa- 
ble of doing. Many of these would not tell a story for true, 
if they knew that it was not true. But they will tell it, all 
the same ; and say that ihey do not credit it. " Have you 
heard that Jones & Brown are about to fail ? It is reported 



106 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

on the street that they have called a meeting of their credi- 
tors ; but I don't believe it." Well, then, what do you men- 
tion it for? The person to whom you repeat the tale may 
have more credulity or less charity than yourself, and may 
repeat it without any disclaimer ; and so you become the 
abettor of a most harmful assault upon your neighbor's 
credit. u Have you heard the story that Mrs. X. lives un- 
happy with her husband? I don't believe it, do you?" 
Such currency as this is given every day by people who call 
themselves Christians to tales which they have not only no 
reason to believe but which they have every reason to 
disbelieve. 

There is another very large class of stories which such 
peple spend a good part of their lives in circulating. These 
are tales that may be true, and may not ; but of whose truth 
they have no knowledge. The tale-bearer hears the story 
from a reputable person, and does not know that it is not 
true, so he passes it on. The great mass of all the gossip 
in circulation is of this character, and the injury and wrong 
that is done by keeping it in circulation no words can tell. 

Here comes a woman with a story on her lips about 
another woman — a story which, if it were true, would sink 
the woman of whom it was told into a pit of infamy. The 
tale-bearer rehearses it to you, with the greatest particu- 
larity ; there are certain suspicious circumstances that give 
color to the story, and she does not fail to descant on these ; 
if you credit her 3^011 never again can trust or honor the 
person of whom she is speaking. But suppose you let me 
question her. 

" Madam, this is a grave accusation that you are mak- 
ing against the character of one of your sisters. You are 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 107 

aware, I suppose, how sensitive and how precious a thing a 
woman's reputation is : you would not utter a word that 
would bring reproach upon a woman unless you were abso- 
lutely sure that word were true ; do you know, from your 
own knowledge, that these statements -that you have made 
are true ? " 

" 0, no," she answers, " I know nothing about it myself, 
but I have no doubt that they are true; I had the story on 
good authority." 

" You do not know that it is true : " how dare you repeat 
such a story unless you know that it is true? How dare 
you, a woman, take any part in giving currency to a tale 
about a woman that may not be true ? " 

" Why, I did not think there could be any harm in 
repeating it : it was told to me by Mrs. Soandso ; she is a 
good woman, a prominent member of the church and an 
active worker in all the benevolent societies ; she would not 
be likely to tell a story that was not true." 

" Madam, it is no flattery to say that you yourself are 
a prominent member of the church, and an active worker 
in benevolence ; you have reported this story to me without 
knowing that it is true ; you yourself have furnished me 
the evidence that respectable people can tell evil tales about 
their neighbors, the truth of which they do not know. I 
have no reason to suppose that Mrs. Soandso is any more 
scrupulous in such matters than you are ; therefore I have 
no reason to believe that she knew anything about the truth 
of the thing she has reported, or that her informant knew 
anything about it, and so on. And I do know, by long 
experience in these matters, that, of the evil tales that are 
in circulation among respectable people, Christian people, 



108 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

concerning their neighbors, more than half are utterly 
destitute of foundation, and four-fifths of the rest are so 
grossly exaggerated and distorted that they are little better 
than lies. There are, therefore, nine chances in ten. that if 
yon repeat a story that comes to you from what you regard 
as good authority, you are helping to perpetrate a grave 
injustice; you are conspiring to inflict a wanton injury 
upon an innocent person." 

Yet the wickedness of reporting such stories is not, I 
am sure, as obvious to a great many good people as it ought 
to be. Slander, talebearing, mischievous gossip, they know 
they ought not to practice ; but these sins consist, as they 
seem to suppose, in telling tales about others that they 
know to be false. To repeat a story which comes from a 
respectable source and which they do not know to be a lie, 
this is not gossip as they understand it. My friends, this is 
gossip ; this is the very talebearing that is denounced in 
the Bible ; this is one of the worst depredations that the 
ravenous tongue of man ever commits upon the rights 
of his neighbors. I wish I could make this seem as plain 
to all of you as it seems to me. I have seen so ninny 
reputations stained, so many lives marred, so many strong 
friends separated, so many homes made wretched by this 
vice of talebearing, that it has come to appear in my eyes 
one of the most mischievous faults to which men and 
women are addicted. And I know some men and women — 
there are some whom I love and honor — who are greatly 
given to it. I wish they would stop it. They do not mean 
to be cruel and unjust, and it is cruel, it is unjust to repeat 
a story to your neighbor's discredit whose truth you do not 
know. Even if you do know the story is true, it may be a 



THE TAMING OF THE TONGUE. 109 

grave question whether you shall circulate it or not. If 
your neighbor's fault is a crime against society, it may be 
your duty to deliver him up to justice ; if it is a fault 
which society has no power to punish, it is probably your 
duty to take the charity that covereth all things and hide 
the fault from the sight of men. But if the accusation is 
only a rumor, then no matter how respectable the source 
from which you receive it, your duty is to suppress it. 
That is a rule to which there can be but few. exceptions ; 
and if the people who profess to be Christians would only 
only live up to it, the fellowship of the churches would be 
greatly strengthened, and their power for good indefinitely 
increased. Your tongue, talebearer, is. one of those that 
most need taming ! 

What is true of spoken gossip is equally true of that 
which is printed in the newspapers. The tongue will be 
tamed, I judge, quite as soon as the types. If a man would 
not be deemed a gentleman who went about every morning 
ringing his neighbors' door-bells, and rehearsing to them 
bits of gossip that he had picked up in the street, why 
should the man be considered a gentlemen who prints -such 
stuff in his newspaper and sends out his newsboys to 
peddle it through the town? You would use harsh words 
about a man who got his living by retailing scandal, orally, 
for five cents a customer ; what have you to say about the 
man who spices his newspaper with such items to make 
it sell? 

" But the tongue can no man tame." So much the 
more need, then, that a power stronger than man's should 
be invoked to subdue its unruliness and mitigate its fierce- 
ness. Such a divine power the fables of all the peoples 



110 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

have celebrated ; the power that tames the wildest beasts, 
and makes the tiger as gentle and docile as a lamb. The 
mythic song of Amphion is but a prelude of the triumph 
of the Prince of Peace, under whose blessed reign all 
savage and noxious creatures shall learn obtdience and 
service ; when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and 
the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child 
shall lead them. And though, as James testifies, the 
tongue is more intractable than any of these, yet He is 
able to bring this also into subjection. No man can tame 
it; but He at whose word the demoniac ceased his ravings, 
and the savage seas hushed their tumult, — He who has the 
power and the purpose to subdue all things unto himself — 
can cause the lying tongue to speak verities, and the reviling 
tongue to praise and bless, and the passionate tongue to be 
silent when the anger rises, and the foul tongue to utter 
purity, and the sarcastic tongue to temper its severities, 
and the scolding tongue to learn gentleness, and the flatter- 
ing tongue to speak with sincerity, and the chattering 
tongue to be more discreet, and the talebearing tongue to be 
still. 



THE TAMED TONGUE. 

Proverbs xv: 4. 

" A wholesome tongue is a tree of life." 

We gave some heed, not long ago, to the taming of the 
tongue, a task, as we then learned on good authority, quite 
beyond the power and skill of man. All other wild beasts 
bow to his sway and do homage to his intelligence, but the 
tongue is more intractable than the wildest of them ; many 
a lion tamer blasphemes God and curses men ; many a 
man who proves his mastery over the lower tribes, is a 
slave to garrulity or deceit or boastfulness. Yet though 
with man this may be impossible, with God all things are 
possible ; and more than one fierce or false tongue has been 
subdued by the victorious grace of God to obey the laws of 
truth and kindness. The fountain that sent forth bitter 
waters with the sweet, and bitter more than sweet, has been 
purified so that all that issued from it was pure and 
refreshing. The unruly evil full of deadly poison has been 
transformed into a servant of order and a minister of 
health and blessing. 



112 ' THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

For proof, I need only appeal to your own observation. 
You have witnessed more than one such change as this. 
You have known those who were deceitful of speech and 
who by the grace of God have become truthful and sincere ; 
those who were foul-mouthed and profane, who have been 
taught to speak purely and reverently ; those who once 
were passionate and petulant in their talk, but who have 
learned to guard the door of their lips so that hot or hateful 
words rarely found utterance ; those who were once given to 
tale-bearing, but whose habit it has become to speak good 
and not evil of their fellowmen. 

History, both sacred and secular, is full of such ex- 
amples. John the Evangelist, the son of thunder, who was 
ready to call down fire from heaven upon the people of an 
inhospitable Samaritan village, and who afterwards became 
the very voice of gentleness and grace ; Paul the apostle, 
who from being one who breathed out threatenings and 
slaughter as his native breath, was changed into one from 
whom all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and 
evil speaking, with all malice, was forever put away ; John 
Newton, the slave trader, John Bunyan, the profane tinker, 
and many others, are living witnesses of the power of the 
grace of God to cleanse the fountain from which the speech 
proceeds, and to chasten the unholy tongue into sobriety 
and kindness. 

And as we saw, in our othei 4 study, something of the 
evils that flow from an untamed tongue, it will be useful for 
us this morning to consider how much good may proceed 
from the tongue that is tamed ; what a source of all health- 
ful and beneficent influences is to be found in sanctified 
speech. 



THE TAMED TONGUE. 113 

"A wholesome tongue," says the wise man, "is a tree 
of life." Wholesome is a good word. The "restless evil 
full of deadly poison," which is James's label for an un- 
sanctified tongue, finds its exact antithesis in this word of 
the proverb. A wholesome tongue is one whose speech is 
not corrupting nor irritating, but full of nourishment and 
helpfulness — sound and sweet and salutary; such a tongue 
is a tree of life. Wise words proceed from it as naturally 
as the leaves grow upon the branches ; beautiful and fitting 
words adorn it as the blossoms adorn the tree ; and the 
fruit of the lips not only gratifies but strengthens the 
hearts of all those who seek to do God's will. A tree 
of life ; a shelter, and a shadow from the heat of scorn and 
obloquy, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm 
against the wall ; a living source of comfort and refresh- 
ment and beauty and blessing — such is the sanctified 
speech of the wholesome tongue. 

1. The tamed tongue is trained for service. All things 
that are tamed are tamed for the service of man ; and the 
tongue follows this law. And when the tongue is thor- 
oughly tamed, when it ceases to be a reckless and lawless 
member, and becomes subordinate to the mind and will of 
man, it becomes a most helpful servant. It is by speech 
that many of our best gains are made. A large part of the 
good that we receive comes to us in conversation. Opinions 
are formed in this way ; knowledge is acquired, good 
impulses ate received, we are stimulated and cheered and 
comforted by our conversation. By conversation, I say ; 
for it is the interchange of thought that is most valuable to 
us ; the talk in which Ave give while we receive ; the com- 
merce of speech, in which we are not merely passive, to be 



HJl THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

lectured to or preached at, but active, imparting while we 
receive ; questioning, turning the thought about so that it 
may strike our minds at the right angle of vision. The 
conversation of the teachable and honest mind is full of 
profit. When your tongue is rightly trained, it will be a 
most diligent purveyor of knowledge. Of the fine art of 
questioning, it soon makes itself master. Jesus approved 
himself to the doctors in the temple by hearing and asking 
questions. It was because of this, I suppose, that he grew 
in favor with men. He was always learning ; always 
modestly and earnestly inquiring into the truth of things. 
There is, of course, a troublesome and impertinent in- 
quisitiveness, which we must all avoid ; but the habit of 
taking toll of every mind that travels your way, is a most 
useful and commendable habit. And if your questions are 
asked with becoming modesty and deference, and if they 
show you to be not a mere fidgety quidnunc, but an honest 
learner, you will generally find people ready and glad to 
communicate to you what they know. With the exception 
of a few persons whose business it is to answer questions — 
such as policemen, hotel clerks, and railway conductors, I 
think that human beings like to answer respectful and 
proper questions. It is a positive satisfaction to most of us 
to communicate truth to those who are seeking truth. And 
thus, without imposing in any wise upon our neighbors, we 
may make the docile tongue serve us well in gathering for 
ourselves the knowledge that shall guide our conduct and 
give us food for many pleasant thoughts. 

2. The tongue will serve our own needs in quite 
another way. The reaction upon our own minds of truth 
which we have expressed, of worthy purposes or sentiments 



THE TAMED TONGUE. 115 

which we have avowed, is most beneficent. We fix our 
thoughts by putting them into words and uttering them. 
Whether a man really knows anything that he has never 
expressed may be an open question. " I know it but I can't 
tell it," is a common excuse of dull or lazy pupils — an 
excuse which intelligent teachers are never ready to accept. 
What we know we generally can say ; but the saying of it 
greatly strengthens our hold upon it. Thus the trained 
tongue serves not only as the purveyor of knowledge but 
as the organizer of knowledge — as the agent by which our 
mental acquisitions are set in order and fastened in the 
memory. 

The wise and temperate utterance of manly feeling 
reacts in the same way upon ourselves. We saw that the 
untamed tongue, by its intemperate and passionate utter- 
ances, often serves to commit us to evil ways ; in his 
passion a man saj^s a thing, and, though his judgement does 
not approve of it, he resolves to stand by it, and is thus 
plunged into conduct that is harmful and ruinous. But 
the hearty utterance of a right thought or a right sentiment 
reacts in the same way up~n the man. The value of the 
truth, the excellence of the sentiment, are impressed upon 
his own mind when he speaks them ; a truth declared is 
better worth fighting for than a truth unuttered ; and thus 
the tongue is often a means of committing us strongly to 
honest pursuits and worthy ways of living. This, I 
suppose, is one reason why confession of the mouth is so 
strongly emphasized as one of the conditions of salvation. 

These then are some of the ways in which disciplined 
and sanctified speech becomes a means of self-improvement. 
But it is not only a purveyor ; it is a minister, It not only 



116 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

serves us royally ; it helps us to serve our fellow men. 
Untamed, the tongue is a source of endless mischief and 
injury to others ; tamed, it may be an instrument of 
uncounted blessings to them, as well as to us. 

3. It is, and always will be, one of the most effective 
agencies in communicating truth. The printed word plays 
a part in the education of mankind now far greater than 
ever could have been imagined one thousand years ago ; far 
greater than ever was dreamed even one hundred years ago ; 
a very large share of all the knowledge that we gain comes 
through our eyes from the printed page or column ; but, 
after all, written instruction will never supersede oral 
instruction. The tongue will always have a function, and a 
large one, in the communication of truth. Many things 
can be said much more clearly, much more impressively, 
than they can be communicated in writing. Shades of 
meaning can be conveyed by the lips that the types cannot 
suggest; and the freshness of life and the warmth and 
vitality and tenderness of love which spoken words often 
reveal can be but poorly transferred to paper. There must 
therefore always be much oral teaching ; much that is 
professional and functional, indeed. The trained and fluent 
tongue plays not now so large a part as once it did in 
instruction and persuasion, but it has not yet passed out of 
use, nor will it very soon. I find* that the teaching of the 
colleges is more and more taking the form of lectures. 

But it is not only the professional talkers and teachers 
who convey truth in wise and helpful speech, In conversa- 
tion, as I have said already, it is freely communicated. I 
am now only giving the converse of the proposition 1 was 
urging a little while ago, when I tried to show how we 



THE TAMED TONGUE. 117 

might learn truth through conversation. What we have 
learned in this way we may also teach in this way. And 
without pedantry, or assumption of superior wisdom, or 
any other offensive display, we may often in our conversa- 
tion with others greatly aid them in acquiring knowledge. 

The art of questioning is not only adapted to the 
gaining of knowledge, but to the imparting of it also. 
Nobody, save the divine Master, ever taught so well as 
Socrates ; and nobody else ever asked half so many 
questions. A question may awaken much thought, may 
start an active mind upon a wide range of profitable inves- 
tigation. A pertinent comment, a wise reflection, a remark 
that stimulates observation, may fall like a fruitful seed 
into the good soil of some listening mind and bring forth 
an abundant harvest. 

4. Not only the mental improvement of others but 
their moral invigoration may be most effectually promoted 
by sanctified speech. This is the precise doctrine of our text 
— "The wholesome tongue is a tree of life." "The tongue 
of the wise," says Solomon again, " is health." It is in the 
moral effects of earnest and gracious speech that we see its 
chief advantage over other forms of communication. Here 
again I am showing the reverse of the picture that I first 
presented ; for if we receive good influences through con- 
versation, then we may impart good influences in that way. 
And, as a matter of fact, the greater part of the moral and 
religious influence that is exerted in the world passes from 
one soul to another in the form of familiar talk. The words 
of the parents in their conversations with their children ; 
the daily talk of the nursery or the table or around the 
evening lamp ; the more intimate and earnest conferences 



118 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

about grave matters of life and conduct — these are the 
forces that shape character. I suppose that most of us, if 
we could trace the influences that have helped most to form 
our habits and fix our principles, would discover that the 
most numerous and effectual of these were words dropped 
in familiar or even casual conversation with those whom we 
trusted and honored. A complete change in plans and 
ideals of life is often brought about by such an unpremedi- 
tated utterance. A school-boy says a manly word in favor 
of doing right to one of his companions, and the impulse 
goes home to the heart of the one who hears it, and braces 
him for better choices in a critical period of life. An 
employer says a friendly word to one of his work-people, 
and the word with its truth and reasonableness falls into 
the life and proves a conserving and constructive influence 
as long as the man lives. Of the good that is done in this 
manner, quietly, through the utterance of words that are 
forgotten by those who speak them, eternity alone will be 
the revealer. 

5. Not always, perhaps, but very often, we do people 
good by making them happy. I am aware that even in the 
qualified form in which I have expressed this sentiment it 
will seem like a fatal heresy to some good people. There 
are not a few who suppose that the only way to do a fellow- 
being good is to make him miserable. I do not think, 
however, that this was our Lord's way of doing good. 
Certain it is that he made a great many people happy in 
one way and another. Nobody else ever did a tithe of 
what he did to make men happy. Wherever he went he 
was feeding the hungry people, and healing the sick ones, 
and opening the eyes of the blind, and causing the lame to 



THE TAMED TONGUE. 119 

leap for joy. Many persons wish that they could have 
witnessed the working of these miracles ; if I could see but 
one, I would rather see the people after the miracles were 
wrought than to see the miracles. To have gone through 
one of those great companies of men who but a little while 
ago were walking in darkness or stumbling with paralysis 
or perishing with leprosy — and are now all sound and 
whole — to see the light in their eyes and hear the exultant 
tones of their voices — that would have been a goodly sight. 
And when I think of one of those companies and realize 
how many such companies there were, and remember that 
Jesus came not merely to minister to the bodies of men but 
also to their souls, I have pretty good evidence that he 
believed in making them happy as one means of doing 
their souls good. Now it is certain that there lies in kind 
and winning words a wonderful power of adding to the 
happiness of our fellow men. 

There is, to begin with, no little pleasure in listening to 
beautiful words or graceful words. "The tongue of the just 
is choice silver," says the wise man ; and again, in similar 
phrase, " A word fitly spoken, how good is it ! It is like 
apples of gold in pictures of silver." 

The artists in verse or prose who discern the melody of 
words and know how to order and utter them so that they 
shall speak to the ear in music — they often give us great 
pleasure. But it is not the artists alone ; many humble and 
unlettered people also by the aptness or the simplicity or 
the homely grace of their speech give us pictures with 
words for colors that dwell long in our memory. 

It is not, however, through the beauty of speech, so 
much as through the kindness of it that we impart and 



120 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

receive the greatest happiness. how much power there is 
in kind words to soothe, to uplift, to cheer, to bless the 
souls of men ! How much every one of us can do to make 
this world a better place to live in, by just having a kind 
and cheery word ready for every body ! Of courso we want 
no treacherous or deceitful words ; and it is seldom that 
these give much pleasure, for their insincerity is generally 
apparent enough ; but when there are kindly thoughts, we 
want the utterance of them in friendly words. How many 
such thoughts there are that never find voice ! How often 
we walk along the streets, silent, self-contained, hardly 
noticing the acquaintances whom we meet ! It is not that 
we do not care for them ; we do ; it is diffidence, perhaps, 
or absorption in other thoughts, that keeps us from giving 
them the greeting that would send a ray of brightness into 
their lives, and rob us of nothing. How often, when our 
social opportunities are ampler, we omit the chance of 
uttering the generous or considerate word that would add 
greatly to the happiness of our fellow men. People come 
into church, sit near each other in the pews, walk out of the 
aisles side by side Sunday after Sunday, and never say 
a word to each other; hardly nod, even! They seem 
to feel that a word of pleasant recognition would be a 
profanation of the place or of the day. Why, brethren and 
sisters, is it not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day? 
And is not the speaking of a friendly word one of the 
simplest and easiest ways of doing good? If our church is 
too holy for such uses, we had better burn it up and 
worship out of doors where there will be less formality. 

I cannot undertake to point out all the ways by which 
words can be made to minister to men's happiness. I 



THE TAMED TONQVE. 121 

might as well undertake to point out all the uses of the 
light in quickening or in painting vegetation, or to cata- 
logue all the good that the summer rain does in refreshing 
the thirsty earth. 

6. Quite another kind of power resides in sanctified 
speech. It has not only the power to please, to confer 
happiness, it has the power also to conquer, to quell, to 
subdue. The vulgar notion is, no doubt, that this sort of 
power belongs to the untamed tongue ; that the man who 
rages and curses and threatens is the kind of man who 
overpowers opposition by his speech. But that is a foolish 
notion. "A soft tongue," says our wise man again, " break - 
eth the bone." Gentle words, quiet words, are, after all, the 
most powerful words. They are more convincing, more 
compelling, more prevailing. There need be no lack of 
firmness, of positiveness in them; they may be just as 
strong and sure as the everlasting hills, and just as calm ; 
just as resistless as the river and not any noisier. We 
often forget this, most of us ; but it is true. Noise, anger, 
explosive tones, superlatives, exaggerations of passion, add 
nothing to the force of what we say, but rather rob our 
words of the power that belongs to them. But the utterance 
that shows a spirit subdued by truth and mastered by 
wisdom, is the utterance that sweeps away opposition, that 
persuades and overcomes. Go into a heated political 
convention, and you will find that it is not the men who 
get angry and storm and swear who carry the day, but the 
men who never lose their tempers and never raise their 
voices ; who keep talking as quietly and placidly as if they 
were discussing the weather. This is a truth that all of us 
who seek to influence our fellow beings, in the family, in 



122 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the church, in the school, in society, in politics, anywhere, 
must lay to heart. We are prone to forget it, but we make 
a great mistake when we do forget it. The soft tongue 
breaketh the bone. The tamed tongue subdues the 
adversary. 

7. Finally, one of the best uses of sanctified speech is 
to furnish an outlet for the thankfulness af the heart. One 
of the old Hebrew synonyms for tongue is glory. More 
than once in the Psalms of David the word has this signifi- 
cation. " By glory," says old Cruden, "is meant the 
tongue, which is that peculiar excellency wherein chiefly, 
except reason, man surpasseth all other creatures. My 
heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth. My tongue breaks 
forth in holy boastings and praises. I will sing and give 
praise even with my glory " — that is, with my tongue. 
Speech is indeed the outward sign of the essential glory of 
man, which is, as Cruden says, his rational life. And 
nothing is more rational than that the highest act of man 
should be the praise of the God who gave him reason. To 
this service all that is highest and noblest in man con- 
tinually summons him. Bless the Lord. my soul, and all 
that is within me bless his holy name ! Bless the Lord, 
my soul, and forget not all his benefits, — is the voice 
of thanksgiving that rises spontaneously to the lips of 
every man who suffers himself to reflect upon the eternal 
Goodness. Think of the chorus of grateful testimony, of 
tender confession, of fervent adoration, of rapturous song, 
that has been ascending to the throne of the blessed One 
ever since the morning stars sang together and all the sons 
of God shouted for joy ! In every nation under the heaven, 
thankful hearts, discerning, though often dimly, the glory 



THE TAMED TONGVE. 128 

of the Lord, have lifted up to him, sometimes in broken 
words, sometimes in noble hymns, the tribute of their 
praises. And this chorus goes on increasing with the years, 
gathering weight and majesty, dropping one by one its 
discords, adding new sweetness to the voices and new voices 
to the song, year by year, and so it shall keep increasing 
until, by and by, its swelling harmony will blend with that 
new song that shall be sung by ten thousand times ten 
thousand and thousands of thousands, " and every creature 
which is in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth, 
and such as are in the sea and all that are in them," we 
shall hear saying, " Blessing and honor and glory and power 
be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the 
Lamb forever." v 

Reasons for thankfulness are not wanting now to any 
of us. If we are silent, it is not because there is no call for 
praise. If we sit mute amid all these praising multitudes, 
all these adoring ages, it is not because the infinite bounty 
has not reached us, nor because the infinite mercy has not 
spared us. praise Him, my brother, praise him ! the 
tongue was made for praising. Tell him to-day the story 
of your thankfulness. Surley there is gratitude and love in 
your heart. Speak it out ; hide it there no longer. Now, 
while the hosts above lift up the melody in which many a 
voice is joining that once murmured to you the cradle song, 
or sang hymns with you around the altar or the hearth ; 
now, while all the tribes of earth send up their greetings of 
the beauty that blossoms with the bountiful summer — now 
do you, with thankful heart, take the cup of salvation and 
call upon the name of the Lord in a joyful song of praise. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 



Mark iv: 25. 

"For he that hath, to him sltall he given; and he that hath not, from 
him shall he taken away, even that which he haili." 

This saying was more than once repeated by our Lord, 
and it seems to have been used to convey more than one 
lesson. In quoting it as a comment upon the parable 
of the pounds, he seems to teach that the productive use of 
a gift increases its value, while the neglect of it tends to its 
diminution and final loss. By " him that hath " is meant 
one who diligently uses the gifts and powers he has ; and, as 
a great preacher of this generation has said, no man can 
truly be said to have that which he does not use. Of 
mental and spiritual gifts this is certainly true. And it is 
not less true of such gifts that they are increased by use 
and diminished or lost by disuse. But this is not the only 
truth taught by this suggestive saying. It conveys to us a 
broader lesson respecting the operations of natural law. 

In its form the text is, of course, hyperbole. It is a 
paradox to talk of taking away what he has from a man 
who has nothing. The expression is the proverbial embodi- 



126 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

ment of a great truth. No doubt it was a proverb, in 
popular use among the Jews at that time, and quoted by 
our Lord as a convenient expression of the doctrine that he 
wished to inculcate. Proverbs are often constructed on 
this plan. Take, for an example, the familiar and homely 
one, "The farthest way about is the shortest way home." 
This is a perfect contradiction, and yet we all perfectly 
understand it as a strong expression of the truth that it 
is often better to go deliberately around difficulties than to 
drive precipitately over them. So with mam' popular saws 
and sayings. They seem to be the outcome of a desire to 
intensify the expression, and the speech sometimes over- 
leaps itself and falls on the side of absurdity. We under- 
stand their meaning, however, in spite of the overstate- 
ment ; we see the intent, and allow for the hyperbole. So 
in this text, we recognize the truth that the Savior is 
teaching, interpreting the proverb by the parable ; and 
it sets before us a great two-fold law of increase and 
decrease whose bearing upon our own lives we do well 
to study. 

The tendency of gifts, powers, possessions to accumulate 
in some hands and dwindle in others is a common fact of 
observation. And it often appears, too, that when accumu- 
lation begins it goes on by a momentum of its own ; that 
the farther it goes the faster it goes ; and on the other hand 
that losses follow the same law ; disaster breeds disaster, 
and misfortune multiplies by a geometrical law. Nothing 
is so successful as success ; nothing is so fatal as failure. 

1. We see the workings of this law in the conditions 
of our physical lives. Health and vigor have a tendency to 
increase. The food we eat builds up the body ; active 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 127 

exercise confirms its strength ; the cold increases its power 
of endurance ; the summer heat nourishes its vitality. 
Nature brings constant revenues to the healthy man ; all 
things work together for his good. On the other hand 
disease and physical feebleness have a tendency to increase. 
The food that ought to nourish the system irritates and 
oppresses it ; exertion brings to the body fatigue and 
enervation ; cold" benumbs it ; heat debilitates it ; nature 
seems to be the foe of feebleness ; all things work together 
to prevent the recovery of health when once it is lost ; often 
it is only by the greatest vigilance and patience that it can 
be regained. 

2. The law that we are considering is fulfilled in the 
facts of the social order. The man who has station or influ- 
ence or wealth or reputation finds the current flowing in his 
favor ; the man who has none of these things soon learns 
that he must stem the current. Popularity always follows 
this law. It is often remarkable how small a saying will 
awaken the enthusiasm of the crowd when spoken by a 
man who is a recognized favorite ; and how many great and 
wise utterances fail of producing any effect whatever when 
he who speaks them is comparatively unknown. Some- 
times the popular favorites commit great blunders and 
exhibit gross ignorance, but these very mistakes are praised 
by the multitude as proofs of their superiority. " He never 
troubles himself about such small matters," they will say ; 
" he has larger affairs on hand ! " The same error com- 
mitted by a less famous person would expose him to 
merciless ridicule. Acres of platitudes, and reams of 
vapid nonsense are perpetrated by men who have somehow 
gained fame — all of them received with applause; while 



128 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

much that is precious is ignored because it falls from the 
lips of men unknown to fame. 

It is almost impossible for one who has gained the 
reputation of being a wit to say anything at which his 
auditory will not laugh. His most sober and commonplace 
speeches will often be greeted as great witticisms. On the 
other hand the purest wit and the choicest humor, if it 
happen to fall from the lips of a plain, matter of fact 
individual, will often be received with funereal gravity by 
all who hear it. 

On him that hath popularity, of any sort, society 
bestows popularity, and he has more abundance; while to 
him that hath it not, society will not give even that which 
he richly deserves. Every body wants to be the friend of 
the man who has many friends ; comparatively few persons 
care to show themselves friendly to those who are alone 
and desolate. A depraved man or woman, cherishing in 
secret many longings after a purer life, meets daily with 
averted faces, and suspicious glances ; hears no words but 
those of distrust or reproof, and sinks desparingly into still 
lower depths of disgrace. From him that hath but little 
honor and respect, society takes away the opportunity and 
the hope of being honorable and respectable ; while to him 
who has these goodly possessions in abundance, it gives 
them still more abundantly. 

3. So with other things besides reputation. Men arc 
apt to bestow their help as well as their applause most freely 
on those who need it least. Those who have gifts to bestow 
often give them to those who do not want them, passing by 
those who are suffering for the lack of them. "The 
destruction of the poor," the wise man says, "is his 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 129 

poverty." Because he is poor he cannot get the credit, the 
privilege, the favor that he could get if he were rich. The 
narrowness of his resources cramps him. With larger 
means, that would enable him to take advantage of oppor- 
tunities, he could subsist more cheaply. It costs him more 
to live because he is poor. So circumstances seem to 
conspire against those who are weakest, to help those who 
least need help and to hinder those who most need it. 
And men, who ought to be governed by a better law, often 
follow the lead of circumstances, and help to kill off the 
weak that the strong may have more room to grow. 

The church that has the rich people is likely to attract 
the rich people ; the weak churches are often left to their 
own destruction, while those that are strong financially are 
strengthened by constant accessions. 

What is this law that we are studying? It is nothing 
else than what some philosophers call the law of natural 
selection — the law of the survival of the fittest; that is, in 
most cases, the strongest. When a tree is cut down in the 
forest a number of sprouts frequently spring up from the 
stump, and these grow together for a while until they begin 
to crowd one another. There is not room for a dozen trees 
on the ground where one tree stood ; there is only room for 
one. But it is generally the case that one of these shoots 
growing from the root of the old tree is a little larger than 
the rest, and this one gradually overshadows the rest, takes 
from the air and the light more nourishment than they can 
get — takes that which belongs to them, so that they 
dwindle and die beneath its shadow, while its roots reach 
out for a firmer footing in the soil and its branches stretch 
forth with loftier pride and ampler shade. Nature selects 



ISO THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the strongest shoot for preservation, and destroys the others 
that it may live. 

We know that man adopts this method of selection in 
all his agricultural operations; in the corn field and in the 
fruit-nursery it is the likeliest growths that are chosen and 
cultivated ; the others are weeded out to make room for 
them. And the naturalists say that nature adopts this 
method of selection — does so by a law of her own which 
they try to explain ; that in the struggle for life the favored 
races are preserved ; and thus they account for the 
existence of species. Surely there is something very like 
this law in the order of the physical and social phenomena 
which we have just been studying. The law can be 
verified ; whether it explains the origin of species is a 
question not yet fully answered. 

But some of you are asking, " Is this law of natural 
selection God's law?" To this question there is but one 
answer. If the law of natural selection is the law of 
nature, then it is God's law. When we study its operations 
among the lower orders of nature — among plants and 
animals — we have no difficulty in admitting that it is 
a law that God himself has ordained. We are certain that 
God has so ordered the natural world that the hardiest 
plants and animals will survive ; that they will crowd out 
those less vigorous and thrive upon their decay. This does 
not trouble us at all until we come to the domain of 
intelligence and morality. Then it seems hard and unjust 
that to him that hath more should be given, while from him 
that hath not even that he hath should be taken away from 
him. But, the question returns, Is not this the very thing 
that happens, all the while? Are not the social phenomena 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 131 

that we have been studying the constant facts of social 
life? Is it not true that the fame of the famous man, and 
the obscurity of the unknown man tend to increase ; that 
the rich man's wealth tends to accumulate, while the poor 
man's poverty tends to become chronic and permanent? Is 
not this the state of things that we are all the while 
witnessing? If such is the general rule, then we know that 
it results from a condition of things which God has 
ordained. If it is a social law, it is a law of God, for 
all the social laws are God's laws. 

We must distinguish here, however, between different 
meanings of the word law- A law is a rule of order or 
conduct fixed by authority : a law is also a regular success- 
ion of events : the first is called a moral law ; the second is 
a natural law. This law of natural selection is a natural 
law, and not a moral law. We speak of it as a law in the 
sense in which we speak of the law of heredity, or the law 
of gravitation, or the law of supply and demand. This law 
is announced by Christ but it is not enjoined by him. 
" This," he says, " is the way things are : this is the course 
things uniformly take. The world is so made, human 
beings are so constituted, society is so ordered, that accu- 
mulations and losses follow this rule. The order of nature 
strengthens the strong and enfeebles the weak. To him 
that hath is given ; from him that hath not, that which he 
hath is taken away." 

This law of natural selection is a law of nature, or- 
dained by God. It is the law under which rewards and 
penalties are administered ; it is a retributive law, for the 
sanctions of the moral law are found in the natural order. 
The machinery which God has provided for the punishment 



132 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

of sin and the rewarding of virtue, is in the order of 
nature. 

But some of you are protesting that this cannot be 
true. "How is it," you ask, "that] the natural law of the 
survival of the strongest tends to the rewarding of the good 
or the punishing of the bad? By this law it is the strong, 
rather than the good that are rewarded. It is to those that 
have, rather than to those that deserve, that abundance is 
given." 

True ; but this is only an illustration of the fact that a 
dispensation of law always works hardship. Law makes 
nothing perfect ; it hurts some that need help and it helps 
some that do not deserve it. Law must be uniform and 
inflexible ; it cannot adapt itself to differing conditions and 
abilities. Gravitation is a good law, but it kills thousands 
of innocent people every year. Yet it would not do to have 
it less uniform and inflexible than it is. So this law of 
nature whose operations we are studying, by which the 
strong are strengthened and the weak enfeebled, is a good 
law, on the whole, though it does work hardship in many 
cases; for it is better that strength and vigor and health 
should be encouraged and promoted ; we do not want the 
universe so ordered that there should be penalties for 
strength and rewards for feebleness. The universe is built 
on the basis of universal righteousness and health : its laws 
are all adapted to that condition of things, and they ought 
to be. If all men were good and wise and strong, then this 
law would only tend to increase the virtue and the wisdom 
and the vigor of all men. It would be seen, then, that this 
is a good law. But sin has entered to enfeeble and deprave 
many, and the result is that the law which ought to be a 



THE LAW AXD THE GOSPEL. 133 

savor of life unto life to them becomes a savor of death 
unto death. The same forces that ought to build them up 
tend to destroy them. So it often is that when the law 
enters offenses abound, and hardships are suffered : under 
its severe and inflexible rule more is given to those who 
have abundance already, while those who have but little are 
stripped of what they have. 

Thus w T e see that the natural law, which is the instru- 
ment of retribution, inflicts suffering and loss not only 
upon the sinful, but upon the weak, the unfortunate, the 
helpless ; upon those who have fallen behind in the race of 
life. That is the way the law works. The law is a messen- 
ger of wrath to many ; and when a man is down, having 
lost his standing and his reputation and his friends and his 
hope and his moral stamina, there is nothing in any law 
that will do anything for him. To such unfortunates law is 
no friend. The one thing that law cannot do is to lift up a 
man that has fallen under its severities. 

Now remember that it is the law that Christ is declar- 
ing in the words of the text. 

But remember also that there is something better and 
diviner than law in the tidings that he has brought us. 
What the law could not do he came to do. It was for the 
deliverance and the relief of those who are being pushed to 
the wall by the operation of these retributive forces that he 
came. 

His life proves this. He did not fall into that social 
order that we have seen prevailing. He did not bestow his 
praise upon the famous, nor his friendship on the popular, 
nor his benefactions on the rich. His words of applause 
greeted the saints who in obscurity tried to live virtuously ; 



184 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

he was the friend of publicans and sinners ; he was the 
constant helper of the poor. It was not to those who had 
abundance that he gave, but to those who had nothing. So, 
in regard to the more precious things of character. " They 
that be whole," he says, " need not a physician, but they 
that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners 
to repentance." 

This is the gospel of Christ. This is the meaning of 
the incarnation and the sacrifice of the Redeemer. The 
law works injury and destruction to all who do evil and to 
many who have never themselves done any evil, but who 
have come into the world in a disabled condition through 
the sins of others. Christ comes to take the part of all 
these. They are morally helpless, but he will help them ; 
sin has abounded in them, and wrought ruin in them ; but 
grace, if they will receive it, shall much more abound. He 
can repair the ruin that sin has wrought. He will give 
these defeated and prostrate souls another chance. The 
law of the spirit of life that is in him shall make them free 
from the law of sin and death. 

The world is against them ; all its social laws and 
usages join to crush them ; but " Be of good cheer," he bids 
them : " I have overcome the world ! " 

Nature is against them ; their own natures are infirm 
and corrupt; their appetites entice them; their selfish de- 
sires mislead them ; but he assures them that by faith in 
him they may be made partakers of the divine nature, and 
thus be reinforced and invigorated for conflict with the evil. 
And thus, though they feel that they arc empty and desti- 
tute of all good, that in very dv(^\ they have nothing, he 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 135 

brings to them abundant supplies of grace ; when they 
receive him, all things are theirs ! 

And, mark you, in doing all this he does not destroy 
but fulfils the law. The law contemplates and requires 
health, prosperity, moral soundness ; and so long as these 
are preserved the law is a minister of good to men. It 
expects that all men will have all the real good of life, 
which their Creator has provided for them ; but for diso- 
bedience and transgression all men would have all the real 
good of life, and to them that have the law gives ; it 
enriches and blesses them abundantly. And what Christ 
does is to give the real good of life, the moral strength and 
soundness which are the source of all life's real good, to 
those who have nothing — who are so reduced in moral 
vigor that they are practically destitute ; to restore to them 
that which they have lost, so that they shall have; and then 
this law is a minister of good to them as God meant it to 
be to all. 

Here is a vine that has fallen from its trellis, and 
that is being choked by the weeds that have overgrown it, 
as it lies prostrate on the earth. The law of nature, the 
law of vegetable growth, is only operating to destroy it so 
long as it remains in this condition ; for the sun and the 
showers nourish the weeds, and they overshadow the vine 
more and more, preventing its growth, and drawing away 
the strength from the 'soil. But the gardener lifts up the 
vine and fastens it to the trellis, and pulls up the weeds 
that are stealing its nutriment, and then the laws of nature 
promote the growth of the vine ; the same laws under 
which its life was being destroyed now confirm its life and 
increase its growth. Some such service as this Christ ren- 



136 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

ders to all those who are morally weak and helpless ; by the 
communication to them of his own life he lifts them out of 
their helplessness into a condition in which all things that 
were working together against them shall work together for 
their good. 

It will be well for us all to remember that if we are 
Christians, we are co-workers with Christ, and that our 
business, therefore, is not to add force to the law whose 
severities bear so heavily upon many of our fellow men, but 
to counteract the severities of the law by ministries of 
sympathy and tenderness and help. It is not for us to take 
away from those that have nothing even that which they 
have ; to strip a fellow being who is in disgrace of the last 
shred of his reputation ; to give all our applause to those 
that are famous and all our scorn to those that are obscure 
and unfortunate ; to trample on those who have fallen and 
make the portion of the poor and the sinful still more 
forlorn than it already is. Circumstances may work 
against them in this way, but we are not circumstances, 
and we are not called on to aid and abet circumstances in 
this destructive work. The laws of nature, and of a de- 
praved and selfish human nature may work together 
against the weak and the sinful ; but there is a higher law 
than the law of nature for us to obey, and that is the law of 
Christ, which is the law of love. Our work is to raise the 
fallen, to succor the unfortunate, to deliver the helpless 
from the pit into which they are sinking. Our work is to 
temper, so far as we can by our good will, the fierce laws of 
trade that often work hardship to the poor, and to rectify 
the social standards by which misfortune is punished as 
sin, and no space is given for repentance to one who has 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 137 

once committed an error. Our great business is to infuse 
the Christian spirit into all the laws and customs and 
usages of our civilization, and to inspire with the Christian 
hope the victims of disaster or of sin. 

And if there are any here who sometimes feel that they 
have very little, and that the forces that hem them in are 
conspiring to take from them what they have ; that things 
seem to work against them all the while, — especially that 
they are steadily losing moral strength and soundness, and 
that the events of life, its trials and its blessings, its mis- 
fortunes and its good fortunes, rather tend to stimulate 
their selfishness and to strengthen their evil passions — if 
there are any who are conscious of the working in their 
natures of this element of decay, let them remember that 
the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free 
from the law of sin and death. If they are morally weak 
and helpless, they are the very ones that Christ came to 
save. The law can do nothing for them, but the Lord of life 
can do everything. It is the destitute that he came to en- 
rich ; it is the sick that he came to heal ; it is the hungry 
that he came to feed ; it is the poor in spirit to whom he 
promises the Kingdom of Heaven. He is the one who 
above all others fills the measure of the prophet's wonder- 
ful words : u For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a 
strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the 
storm, a shadow from the heat when the blast of the 
terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." If they will 
but lay hold upon his strength, and trust in his abound- 
ing grace, they who have nothing will soon find themselves 
possessing all things. 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH? 



Isaiah xiii: 12. 

"I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than 
the golden wedge of Ophir." 

The text is part of a prediction in which the prophet 
foretells the desolations that are to befall Babylon. " There- 
fore, saith the Lord, I will shake the heavens and the earth 
shall remove out of his place in the wrath of the Lord of 
hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. And it shall be 
as the chased roe and as the sheep that no man taketh up; 
they shall turn every man unto his own people, and flee 
every one unto his own land. Every one that is found 
shall be thrust through, and every one that is joined unto 
them shall fall by the sword." So great is to be the 
slaughter among the Chaldeans, that men shall become as 
scarce in the land as nuggets of gold. 

Doubtless this is the first idea suggested by the 
prophet's bold figure — the great scarcity of men in the 
land after the devastating war which he announces. But, 
doubtless, there is also connected with this the economical 
suggestion, that the value of men would be enhanced by 



lJfO THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

their scarcity. Rare things are commonly precious things. 
Men would he too precious to be purchased with gold, on 
account of their scarcity. Probably it is not true that 
human life is held more dear in times of war ; the contrary 
is true. Men become so accustomed to the sacrifice of life 
that they witness its destruction with a strange indiffer- 
ence ; but some sense of the value of the lives sacrificed is 
apt to dawn upon the people after the war is over, when the 
nation finds its resources wasted, and the people sit 
desolate in their homes, waiting for the strong and the 
brave who shall return no more. It is a hard school 
in which to learn this lesson of the preciousness of man ; 
but if it can be learned in no other way it may well be 
enforced upon the world, even by such fiery tuition. 

One who listens to the talk of the street and the shops, 
might easily get the impression that the value of man is 
a subject of general interest. " How much is he worth? " is 
a question often heard. Tradesmen and money-lenders are 
asking it with a mercenary accent ; neighbors and gossips 
with perennial curiosity. How much is he worth, indeed? 
It is a momentous question. What answers do you hear? 
He is worth five thousand dollars; ten thousand : a million. 
ten millions : such are the estimates. And of one and 
another it is said with a mixture of pity and contempt. 
"He is not worth anything!" We all understand the 
meaning of the familiar phrase and know what a distorted 
sense it gives to the word worth. Probably we all use the 
phrase innocently enough : yet it sounds, after all. a little 
strange, when we pause to listen to it. "How much is he 
worth?" "One hundred thousand dollars." Shall we 
estimate the value of a man in dollars? Before the war 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH? lJ^l 

men and women were actually bought and sold for money. 
How much is he or she worth, was then in some quarters a 
question simply commercial ; a question to which a per- 
fectly literal answer could be given. Of course it is not in 
this sense that we employ the phrase. It is a figure of 
speech as we use it ; and whether it is meton} 7 my or 
synecdoche, I leave the students of rhetoric to tell. 
Perhaps you cannot rightly name the figure until you know 
the thought in the mind of him who speaks it. The 
association of ideas is between the man and his posses- 
sions ; when we ask how much he is worth, we wish to 
know how much his estate is worth ; we put the man for 
the estate. The figure gives a vicious twist to language ; it 
seems to merge the man in his belongings ; it hammers in, 
by its incessant iteration, a notion that we are all quite too 
willing to entertain. Pope's often quoted line, 

"Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow," 

is sound doctrine, vastly sounder than much that this 
verse-maker preached ; but our common question seems to 
imply that it is not worth, but money's-worth that makes 
the man ; that worthless and moneyless are synonyms. 
May it not be well to go a little deeper than the common 
usage goes into the meaning of this phrase, and ask, with 
all seriousness, not concerning this man or that man, but 
concerning man, any man, every man, " How much is 
he worth?" 

Questions of value are apt to be questions of com- 
parison. The object whose value is inquired about is 
compared with some other object. " How much is the 
house or the horse worth? " So many dollars, you answer. 



1J$ THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

The dollar is the standard of value. If there were no 
circulating medium, articles would be exchanged one 
against another ; a bushel of wheat would be worth so 
many yards of calico ; a ton of coal would be worth 
so man}' - days' labor. Value, as we conceive it, results from 
comparison of exchangeable objects. We will not go into 
the question of absolute value, but we will make use of 
this figure of comparison in trying to determine the value 
of man. 

1. Man is worth more than his institutions. This has 
not always been the received doctrine. Many persons have 
supposed that the chief end of man was to support certain 
institutions. We get many a hint of this error in our 
study of the people whose history is contained in the 
Bible. They thought that their ceremonial law was vastly 
more sacred than the men who worshipped by means of it. 
If their ritual obstructed human growth, crippled virtue or 
killed charity, no matter; these must stand back and let 
the ritual be exalted. And when Christ told them that the 
sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath — 
that men were of more account than all this ritual 
machinery, they were astonished and seandalized ; they 
called him a blasphemer. 

This is no singular phenomenon. History is full of 
the outworking of this tendency. All over the world, all 
along the ages, • men have been made the the slaves of 
systems. Rites and forms and ceremonies and doctrines 
have been lifted up and men have been made to prostrate 
themselves before them. The problem of the religionist 
generally has been, not how to make his religion service- 
able to men, but how to bring the most men under the sway 



HO]]' MUCH TS HE WORTH? L!f3 

of his religion. The crowds of converts were his trophies, 
signs of the victory of his faith, to grace its triumph as it 
moved on to universal dominion. 

When Christ came his teachings were so entirely out 
of harmony with this notion, that the people were fairly 
bewildered by them. Listen to this first announcement of 
his mission, made in words which he quoted from one 
of the old prophets in the synagogue of his native village : 
" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath 
anointed me to preach the gospel to t^e poor ; he hath sent 
me to heal the broken hearted ; to preach deliverance to the 
captives and recovery of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty 
them that are bruised ; to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord." Here is promise of a religion that has no higher 
object than to benefit mankind; a religion that addresses 
itself immediately to the task of alleviating all human 
woes and ministering to all human needs. No wonder that 
when the Founder of this religion spoke the common 
people heard him gladly. In his eye man was of supreme 
worth; man was of far more account than the most august 
and sacred of his institutions. 

What has been said of religious systems is equally 
true of political systems. Man is of greater value than 
these ; but there have always been those who sought to 
make him subordinate to them. There is now, and always 
has been a prevalent notion, that people were made for 
governments, and not governments for the people ; that it 
is more important that certain dynasties should reign, or 
that certain political institutions should be kept intact, 
or that certain parties should remain in power, or that 
certain policies should be adopted, than that men should be 



144 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

free and wise and good and prosperous. There is many a 
courtier who thinks that the people were made to be ruled 
and robbed by the despot on the throne ; there is many a 
partisan who cares more for the success of his party than 
for the welfare of the people ; there is many a reformer, so 
called, who would rather see men debauched and ruined by 
thousands than to see them saved by any other methods 
than those which he advocates. So prone are human 
beings to make idols of their own schemes or contrivances, 
and to offer their fellow men as sacrifices to the gods that 
their own hands have made. 

It is not true that human institutions are of no value ; 
they are often of great value. They are indispensable to 
human life and progress. Institutions of religion are 
necessary ; so are institutions of government. But they 
are not ends ; they are instruments. Those words of 
Christ before quoted — "The sabbath was made for man 
and not man for the sabbath" — are a specific statement 
of a general truth, namely, that all social, political and 
religious institutions were made for man, and not man for 
his institutions. These great organic systems of religion 
and government may well be likened to garments, intended 
for the protection and comfort of man ; and the mistake of 
politicians and ecclesiastics is simply in supposing that 
man is nothing but a lay-figure on which to display the 
fine fabrics of religion and government. 

If what we have said is true, it follows that those 
systems are best which best assist the development of man- 
hood. Find out what kind of men they produce, and you 
have found out exactly what they are worth. If the men 
who live under them become strong, wise, self-reliant, heroic, 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH? 1^5 

benevolent, the institutions are certainly good ; if they 
become weak, cowardly, superstitions, selfish, the institu- 
tions are certainly bad. Your religions, yonr governments, 
your doctrines, your rituals, your polities, must all be 
judged by the men w r ho grow up under them. Men are 
more precious than all this institutional machinery, and 
the machinery is precious just in the degree to w^hich it 
serves to produce men. 

2. Man is worth more than his costliest possessions. 
This is another of those truths, often on our lips, but not 
more than half believed. Evidence of this is visible in the 
respect paid to wealth, even when it is joined to one who is 
but a caricature of manhood ; even when it is the spoil that 
has been won by the debasement of manhood. You see 
men and women thrust out of society one day and lionized 
the next, not because any change for the better has taken 
place in them, only because their possessions have been 
increased. It is true that there are some circles of good 
society into which the passport must be something better 
than a bank account, but these are rather exceptional ; the 
crowd is more ready always to worship a golden calf than 
to honor a prophet. How plain are the proofs before our 
faces every day that the multitudes do not believe a man to 
be more precious than gold ! 

It is not the rich alone whose judgment in this matter 
goes astray ; the poor fall into the same error. They say 
that money does not make the man, say it angrily and 
bitterly, not seldom ; but their conduct often shows that 
they think, after all, that money does make the man. 
Their envy of the rich convicts them. They hate the 
rich for possessing what they have not ; the intensity of 



lJf6 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

their hatred shows how much they value such possessions. 

Perhaps we need not look abroad for evidence that 
character is less valued than lucre. Are there not in our 
own conduct, sometimes, clear illustrations of this fact ? 
Do we not often find ourselves preferring gold to manhood ; 
laboring more diligently to enlarge our possessions than to 
improve ourselves ? Are we not often more desirous of 
having much than of being somewhat? Ah, brethren, 
shall we ever learn that it is of more consequence that our 
minds should be enlarged, and our hearts purified ; that we 
ourselves should grow unto a goodly symmetry and a godly 
manliness of character than that we should get any or all 
gains whatsoever? 

It is not true that property is of no consequence ; you 
must say of man's belongings exactly what you say of his 
institutions ; they are good, just in proportion as they as- 
sist in the development of his character. Money may be 
made to minister to manhood : when it does so it is a 
blessing to its owner and to the world ; when it does not, it 
is a curse to him, and probably no blessing to anybody. 
Find out how the man is getting on, how the character is 
thriving, and you have found out the real value of his 
wealth. For the piercing question is, after all, " How much 
is he worth? " 

Now and then you find a man, like the venerable Peter 
Cooper, who died not long ago in New York, to whom 
money becomes a means of grace ; who learns how to use it 
in such a way as to enlarge and ennoble himself. What a 
happy life Peter Cooper has been living for the last thirty 
years! What magnificent returns he has been getting on 
his investments ! Not to speak of all the numberless 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH ? J Jf7 

charities that have flowed unceasingly from his hand, see 
that great Institute for the Working Classes that has been 
standing now for more than a quarter of a century; in 
whose free schools two or three thousand pupils are receiv- 
ing instruction every year in the arts and the sciences; 
whose great free reading room and library and art galleries 
are a source of pure delight and boundless benefit to 
millions; whose ample endowment will maintain it there in 
the center of that great city doing its beautiful and blessed 
work for generations to come. 

How much was Peter Cooper worth? If you ask that 
question with the ordinary meaning, I suppose that there 
are some scores of men in New York whose estates are 
larger than his ; men who have got their money, as he never 
did, by spoiling their neighbors ; colossal highway robbers, 
some of them, who plant themselves on the great thorough- 
fares of the land and levy tribute on all who pass over 
them ; men whose thoughts of their fellow men are mostly 
thoughts of pillage, and whose dearest wishes for the public 
take the form of curses ; of such men there are several 
whose estates are far larger than Peter Cooper's ; but how 
much more he was worth, after all, than the richest of 
them ! " The richest man in New York," one of the papers 
called him. Rich indeed he was in the ever enlarging 
resources of a noble manhood; rich in the gratitude of his 
fellow men ; rich in the resources of happiness that have 
come to him, even in this life, as the fruit of his invest- 
ments, and that will go on and on increasing and multiply- 
ing through the ages to come. 

" What I spent I had," reads the old English epitaph ; 
" what I kept I lost ; what I gave I have." 



lJfS THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

How much there is in it ! " What I spent," for my own 
pleasure merely, " I had.' 1 The momentary delight for a 
moment was, and then was not. " What I kept I lost.' 1 
All that a man keeps till he dies he loses absolutely. The 
moment his breath is gone from his body his power over it 
ceases. He cannot take it with him ; he cannot control the 
use of it. It is as absolutely lost to him as if it had been 
swept away by flood or flame. " What I gave I have." If 
the gift has been judicious that is true. If it has been 
given for the enriching of manhood, for the building up of 
character, that is true. If you can invest in a man in such 
a way as to save and strengthen and enlarge the man, the 
man will continue to live ; your interest in him will never 
be extinguished ; your satisfaction in the fruit that comes 
from your labors and your sacrifices will endure through 
eternity. Is not Peter Cooper alive to-day ? Is not the 
money that he invested in the great charities his, to-day, in 
the deepest and truest sense of the word ? Is he not get- 
ting, is he not sure to get, for ages to come, a glorious 
income from those investments ? Think of the tens of 
thousands whose path has been smoothed, whose burdens 
lightened, whose lives cheered by his benefactions, and who 
will be telling him, all down the eternities, the story of their 
gratitude? How much is such a man worth ? Count his 
gains if you can ; they are beyond the reach of my arith- 
metic. 

But notice that it is the man and not the money that is 
the precious thing. It was the man who gave to the money 
all this power of productive service. And the reason why 
he had the power to do this was because he himself 
believed from the bottom of his heart that a man is more 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH ? lJ^Q 

precious than gold. Any man who believes this as heartily 
as he believed it is just as rich as he was ; he may not now 
have the power to confer so many benefits, but he has 
within himself the resources out of which all manner of 
blessings shall arise to him and to all men throughout 
eternity. 

I want you to believe this, you poor, who are sometimes 
oppressed and angered by the false standards with which 
society measures worth ; you who are sometimes ashamed 
and humiliated because your possessions are so small. You 
have not much gold ? No ; but you have a human soul, 
and that is something worth far more. And now will you, 
with a mind whose faculties, ranging free through the 
universe, are fitted to grasp all knowledge ; with a heart 
that can hold an unmeasured volume of holy love and joy ; 
you, who are allied to God himself in your nature, and to 
whom immortal life and blessedness are offered — will you 
be found complaining because to you but few of the baubles 
of wealth and honor have been given ? How much would 
they add to your native honor and dignity, if you had them 
all ? 

Have you ever seen the Apollo Belvidere ? It is the 
statue of a man, chiseled out of marble, one of the noblest 
figures that art has ever produced. Do you think that this 
statue would be made any nobler or more beautiful if men 
should put gold rings on its fingers and gold bracelets on 
its wrists, and strings of gold beads upon its neck, and 
should trick it out with ribbons and buttons and fringes. 
Would not these tawdry ornaments detract from the simple 
dignity and majesty of that model of manly grace and 
strength ? Well, the accidents of wealth and rank and 



150 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

office and station cannot add much more of ornament or 
value to a true man than could trinkets like these to the 
beauty of the Belvidere Apollo. His manhood itself, to all 
clear insight, is something infinitely grander and diviner 
than these belongings. 

I beseech you, then, ye poor, remember this. If you 
have not wealth you have manhood, and how much more 
than this have the lordliest of men ? What though, upon 
the garments of some of your fellow-pilgrims in this world, 
a little more of the dust of earth has gathered ? Came you 
not all from the same starting-place ? Travel you not all 
to the same destination ? And when you reach it, will not 
your earthly possessions be just the same as theirs ? Why, 
then, should they lightly esteem you, or why should you 
despise yourselves ? I charge you that you despise not 
yourselves. I charge you that you think upon your divine 
origin, and your immortal heritage, remembering always, 
that however honorable it may be to be a rich man, or a 
titled man, or a famous man, after all it is the crowning 
glory and honor of earth simply to be a man ! 

A bright truth is this; but it has a shadowy Bide, and 
that I must not conceal. Man is more precious and honor- 
able than his institutions, than his titles and offices, than 
his possessions and goods; more precious than all else on 
earth ; but things the most precious may have their beauty 
tarnished and their excellence spoiled. And man. who out- 
ranks all other values, is not exempted from this liability. 
The loss or the ruin of a man is not an uncommon acci- 
dent. Would that it were ! Would that our eyes were not 
so often pained by the sad spectacle ! Would that our ears 
might never again hear the wail of sorrow that earth is all 



HOW MUCH IS HE WORTH f 151 

the while sending up to heaven for souls that are lost. 
How glorious and godlike a thing your manhood is I have 
tried to show you ; now I would warn you of the danger 
that it may be defiled and lost. 

What is it, then, that makes manhood so precious a 
thing ? Wherein resides this excellent value ? It is found 
in those powers of man that fit him for communion with 
God. It is because of his kinship to God that man is of 
such illustrious worth. And nothing seems more certain 
than that these powers may, by disuse or misuse, be 
impaired and finally lost. And so cut off by his own act 
from the source of all light and love, he is deserted by all 
generous impulses, by all holy aspirations, and is left to 
grovel in the mire of selfishness and carnality. Thus does 
he who was so royally endowed fling away his birthright ; 
thus does he wander, miserable prodigal, into the far 
country of sin, wasting his substance, and perishing with 
soul hunger. 

Are there any among you whom this truth does not 
concern ? Some of you are trying to save yourselves from 
such unhappy fate as this ; to preserve from harm and ruin 
your spiritual natures : but is it not plain to you that scores 
of men all about you are losing that precious thing which 
you are trying to keep ? Some are whirling in the giddy 
dance of dissipation; some are dallying with the toils of 
vice ; some are frittering their energies away in folly ; some 
are stiffening in the frosts of covetousness ; some are wast- 
ing away by the slow decay of idleness ! Alas ! how many 
ways there are that seem right to men, whose end are the 
ways of death ! And is it not possible to save some of 
these? Is not a man worth saving ? If there be joy in the 



152 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

presence of God over one sinner saved, is there not good 
reason why you, who see so many lost, should do what you 
can to save them ? Are not men too precious to be lost? 
Can you not, will you not, by some means, save some ? 

Are there any signs that any of those to whom I speak 
are losing themselves ? These natures of yours, worth so 
much in their perfection, so precious to you and to God, 
made in the image of God, is there any danger that they 
will be perverted and ruined ? Alas, I fear that with some 
of you there is danger ! I am afraid that you are squan- 
dering the precious thing which God gave you to keep. I 
am afraid that the rust of slothfulness is corroding it ; or 
that the fires of lust are consuming it; or that the attritions 
of worldliness are wearing it away. I am afraid that you 
have forsaken God, and despised the loving-kindness of 
His Son. And if you do thus cut yourself off from all 
communication with Him who is the life and light of men, 
what else can happen to you, but that all that is most like 
God within you shall shrivel and decay ; but that inno- 
cence shall be supplanted by deceit, and purity by foulness, 
and honor by intrigue, and generosity by selfishness, and all 
noble affections by all crafty and Satanic passions ? Is 
there not danger of some such fate? Look within, I 
beseech you, and measure the tendencies. Give diligent 
thought, I pray you, to this matter, lest the majestic nature 
God has given you become but a majestic ruin ; lest angels 
bow above you chanting solemnly, " How art thou fallen 
from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning ! " 

"How much was he worth when he died?" sonic man 
may ask. What if the seer must answer : " He was the 
heir of immortality, but he sold his birthright for a song." 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. 

Genesis xvi: 8. 

"And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence earnest thou, and whither 
wilt thou goV 

GALATIANS IV: 24. 

" Which things contain an allegory." 

We have here a dramatic incident in the early Hebrew 
history. An Egyptian handmaid belonging to Sarai, the 
wife of Abram, was found by the angel of the Lord near a 
fountain of water in the wilderness. The place seems to 
have been somewhere in the northeast corner of Arabia 
Deserta, on the road from Egypt to Assyria. The word 
wilderness applied to the region is not therefore used in 
that restricted sense in which we often find it employed 
in the Bible, as signifying simply an uninhabited region* 
devoted to pasturage ; it was a dreary waste of rock and 
sand, seared by south winds that came hissing from the 
great Arabian desert ; offering the traveller no better shelter 
from the scorching sun than now and then the shadow of a 
great rock ; a desolate and thirsty land, with only here and 
there a fountain where the pilgrim paused to refresh him- 
self and gain strength for the weary leagues before him. 



16 '4 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

It was near one of these infrequent fountains, in the 
midst of this unfriendly region, that the angel of the Lord 
found this Egyptian girl. 

The angel's greeting is a recognition ; he names her 
and defines her in three words : " Hagar, Sarai's maid ! " he 
says ; and the girl hears the searching voice and looks 
up to see a face of commanding majesty and sweetness. 
" Whence earnest thou?" the angel demands. Was not the 
question superfluous? Do not the words already addressed 
to her show that the angel needed no information? If he 
knew her name and knew that she was Sarai's maid, he 
knew whence she had come. But questions are often wisely 
asked, less for tne benefit of the questioner than of the 
questioned. It is often the strongest way of putting a 
statement, to make a question of it. And it is often the 
surest way of fastening a truth in the mind of another to 
frame a question that shall elicit from him the expression 
of that truth. The teacher does not ask the pupil, how 
much is six times four, or what is the capital of Maine, 
because he wants information, or merely because he wants 
to find out whether the pupil knows the answer; but also 
because he wishes to have the pupil strengthen his own 
hold upon the truth by expressing it with his own lips. 
The question that prompts us to tell what we know T 
sharpens our knowledge; and, similarly, the question that 
makes us tell what we are doing, may often greatly in- 
fluence our conduct. For many a man, drifting on in a 
course of evil conduct that he has never stopped to define, 
it would bo a good thing if some one, by a pointed 
question, could get him to say out, in plain words, just 
what he is doing. If he would only honestly state it 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. 155 

to himself, he would shrink from it with horror. Always 
when one is going in questionable ways it is well to pause 
and put the thing he is doing into a clear proposition. I 
am engaged in some business transaction and a good angel 
stands by my path and asks me, "What are you doing?" 
If the operation, though nominally legitimate, is really 
fraudulent, and if I, though sometimes a little too eager for 
profits, am not an ingrained rascal, it may be good for me 
to have the question put to me in just that way. For, on 
reflection, I shall be forced to answer : " I am endeavoring 
to get the money of my neighbor without giving him a fair 
equivalent." And, having been brought to put the matter 
into such plain words, I shall be forced, if I am not a 
rascal, to withdraw from the operation. My belief is that 
the angels ask us questions of this sort very often ; that 
the demand, "What doest thou?" spoken by a monitor we 
do not see, often searches us in moments of disobedience 
or waywardness. Sometimes, I fear, we lie to the angel, as 
Hagar did not ; we try to disguise the purpose or the deed 
in seemly phrases ; we strive to make ourselves believe that 
the evil thing is lawful and right ; and such paltering with 
our consciences has frightful consequences ; it is thus that 
men lose their souls. But the pointed query, spoken to us 
in the silence, that fixes our thought directly on the nature 
of the thing we are doing, may serve to arrest the soul that 
is not wedded to iniquity, and may result in the reversal 
of its choices. 

Not only for clearing away the haze that often obscures 
an unworthy purpose, but also for removing the fog in 
which good purposes are sometimes involved, a pointed 
question may serve us. There are those whose intention to 



156 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

do right, to live the highest life, is rather nebulous. There 
are men who really mean to be the servants of Christ, but 
they have never said so, even to themselves. Their in- 
tention lies there, cloudy, crepuscular, in their mental 
horizon, but it is there. It influences their lives, not 
seldom ; it ought to have far more power over them than it 
has, and would have, if it could only get from themselves a 
frank and clear statement. If some question could be put 
that would lead them to say right out in words what they 
mean to be — to objectify their purpose in language, so that 
they could look at it and understand it — the process 
would be most salutary. There is a deceitfulness of sin 
that sometimes hides from a man his own deepest and 
purest purposes ; and if these could in some way be 
clearly discovered to himself, it would be a great service 
to him. 

Whether a man is good or bad at heart it is well for 
him to know the truth about himself; and any question, 
whether it come from . the lips of angel or of mortal, that 
helps him to a clear self-revelation is no doubt divinely 
spoken. 

Hagar answered the angel's question, " Whence earnest 
thou?" honestly. "I flee from the face of my mistress, 
Sarai," she said. The girl was running away from home. 
It was a home by no means perfect, according to 
our standards, from which she was bent on escaping. 
Many things went on within it that would not be tolerated 
in any Christian home. The social order, of which this 
home was a part, was of a kind (hat we should consider 
defective and even abominable. Hagar herself had been 
wronged; her deepest wants had not been met: her holiest 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. 157 

feelings had been outraged ; and she had gone forth in 
resentment and desperation, vowing never to return. 

Bat this home from which she had gone forth, in spite 
of all the enormities wrought into its structure, was about 
the best dwelling place on the earth in that day. It was 
the dwelling place of a man who, although his notions 
of conduct were extremely crude, if judged by our higher 
standards, was yet one of the noblest men the world has 
ever seen. And although the conditions from which Hagar 
was seeking to escape were such conditions as we should 
urge any self-respecting young woman in our day to flee, 
and stand not on the order of her going, nevertheless her 
best welfare and her highest duty doubtless required her to 
do the thing that it would now be impossible for any 
woman to do without degradation. For there was no place 
to which she could escape where the same conditions would 
not surround her ; there was no other household that was 
not polygamous, in which she could find refuge ; no other 
mode of life was even conceived of then : the hardships she 
encountered in the house of Abrani she would suffer every- 
where else ; while she could find in no other household the 
elevation of thought, the nobility of character, the moral 
stimulus and strength that she could find in Abram's 
family. She was turning her back on a better society, 
a purer life, a larger opportunity than she could find 
anywhere else in the world. This was the fact to which the 
angel's question, "Whence earnest thou? " at once recalled 
her. 

But this was not all. There was another question. 
" Whither wilt thou go? 1 ' the voice demanded. Hagar was 
going down to Egypt. And what was there in Egypt that 



158 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

could give her peace? It was a land darkness and moral of 
degradation ; a land where the soul of man was held in 
hopeless subjection to the things of sense. Egyptian art, 
the critics say, shows us the prevalence of matter over 
mind ; mind vainly struggling with the forces of nature, 
and domineered by them. Thus the pyramids show us a 
structure in which the downward pull of gravitation is 
most feebly resisted — the mass taking the shape in which 
gravitation would have the least effect upon it. The 
Egyptian architect scarcely ventures to rear a perpendicular 
wall, much less to lift a graceful column or spring a 
shapely arch; lest gravitation should get hold of his fabrics 
and topple them over. The mastery of matter that we see 
in a great Gothic cathedral the Egyptian does not attempt ; 
he dares not match his constructive power against the 
forces of nature. He is the slave of nature. And the 
social life in which this bondage is felt must be a life 
of degradation. I do not wish to deny that there were 
great elements in the ancient Egyptian civilization, but 
the downpull of materialism was too strong for them ; and 
the sands of the desert have been drifting for centuries over 
the ruins that alone remain to testify of their existence. 

How much did Hagar, Sarai's maid, know of all this? 
Very little, I suppose. Yet she did know that life in 
Egypt was coarser and poorer far than life in Abram's tent ; 
she knew that the influences surrounding her in Egypt 
would be far less wholesome than those from which she was 
escaping ; she knew that that lofty vision of the one true 
God which made the ground holy where Abram stood, 
would not be likely to sanctify the society toward which 
her face was turned. 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. 159 

This, then, is the simple fact that the angel's questions 
bring into the light of the girl's consciousness. Hagar was 
running away from the household of Abram, friend of God, 
and she was going down to Egypt. She was leaving a very 
light place, for a very dark one. Behind her were perplexi- 
ties and discomforts, but great hopes also, and inspiring 
associations ; before her was no relief for her trouble and 
no hope for her future. It was more than doubtful whether 
she would ever reach Egypt ; she was far more likely to 
wander in the wilderness and perish by the way ; but the 
goal, if she reached it, showed no prize worth striving for. 

Such is the historical fact. Is it not lawful to use it as 
a type? Paul seems to say so. He refers, in the Galatians, 
to the story of Hagar — to another chapter in her story — 
and after reciting what happened he says, " Which things 
contain an allegory." They contain an allegory, the New 
Version puts it ; the Old Version says, they are an allegory. 
The New Version is the more exact, and the more reason- 
able. The story was not intended to teach the spiritual 
truth toward which w T e are looking now ; but it serves to 
illustrate that truth. It furnishes us a pertinent analogy. 
For there are other wanderers, in other wildernesses, to 
whom some good angel might well put the questions that 
Hagar heard by the fountain Lahai-roi, " Whence earnest 
thou, and whither wilt thou go?" 

I suppose that I may be speaking to some whose feet 
are pressing the shifting sands of the wide wilderness 
of doubt. Their religious beliefs are in an unsettled and 
chaotic condition. They are only certain of one thing, and 
that is that they are not certain of anything. They are 
agnostics. Now there are subjects on which most of us 



160 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

can well afford to be agnostics. An agnostic is one who 
does not know. Well, there are quite a number of things 
that I do not know, and it seems to me the part of wisdom 
to say so. There are not a few subjects concerning which 
the Lord of light has seen fit to leave us in darkness. 
Neither in nature nor in revelation is there any distinct 
teaching about them. And the things which are least 
positively taught in the Revelation are things which men 
often teach with the greatest positiveness, and which they 
are willing to make all their neighbors heretics for refusing 
to believe. But we must venture to resist all such dictation, 
and, to say frankly, sometimes, that we do not know. Our 
faith will be all the sounder and clearer and stronger if 
mixed with a resolute agnosticism respecting the things 
that we do not know. 

But while there are subjects of this nature, about 
which we do well to confess our ignorance, there are 
other subjects of which faith ought to give us a strong 
assurance. Agnosticism does well for certain outlying 
districts of our thought, but not for the great central 
tracts of religious belief and feeling. The navigator 
may acknowledge without shame, that he does not know 
the boundaries or the channels of those Polar seas where 
man has never sailed; but you would not take passage 
with a captain who declared that he knew nothing of 
the way out of the harbor where his vessel lay, and 
nothing of the way into the port to which you wanted 
to go, and did not even know whether there were any 
such port. The doctor may safely own that there are 
some things that he does not know about disease — about 
malaria, for instance; but if he should tell you that 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. t61 

nobody knows anything about laws of health and methods 
of treatment you would ask him to send in his bill at once. 
As a business man you will readily confess that trade has 
many contingencies which you can not predict, but you feel 
that you know something about the general laws of traffic 
and the conditions of success, else you would not venture 
your capital in trade. 

Just so in the religious life. All wise men know that 
there is much that they do not know ; it is the beginning of 
wisdom to discern the limitations of knowledge ; but the 
theory that all is uncertainty in the religious realm ; that 
there is no sure word of promise, no steadfast anchor of the 
soul, no charted channels, no headlands of hope, no knowl- 
edge of a port beyond seas, is a bewildering, benumbing, 
deadening theory ; out of it comes nothing but apathy and 
despair. The religious faculty in man is one of the central 
elements of his nature; call it what you will — instinct, 
feeling, tendency — it is there; it is ineradicable; and it 
needs and must have its appropriate uutriment, its normal 
training, else the life is defective ; its joy and its strength 
forever depart. The space that ought to be filled by a 
normal and wholesome activity, a healing, invigorating, 
commanding, unifying energy, becomes a dismal vacancy, 
and the soul is wretched albeit it knows not the meaning of 
its own wretchedness. Even when the doubter stops short 
of complete agnosticism in religious matters, this sense of 
desolation often invades his life. When doubt becomes a 
larger factor than faith in his religious thinking; when the 
things that he denies are more than those that he affirms ; 
wmen the posture of his mind toward all these highest 
themes is that of negation, then a sense of lonesomeness, a 



162 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

vague, undefined melancholy are sure to overspread the life. 
This land of doubt is a wilderness, treeless, verdureless, 
shelterless, a dry and thirsty land where no water is. This 
is a truth — if it is a truth — that admits of no argument. 
It is a fact of experience ; if none of you know that it is 
true, then it is true for none of you ; if any of you do know 
it, you do not need to have it proved ; the simple statement 
of it is enough. I could not prove to you by argument that 
the dumb ague is uncomfortable ; if any of you have had 
it, you do not wish me to waste any words in proving it. 
It is because I believe that there are some in this congre- 
gation who know that the wilderness of doubt is a desolate 
place, who know that in losing their hold upon the great 
spiritual verities they have parted with much that gave zest 
and charm to life, that I am speaking now. To all such 
wanderers, I bring the question of the angel to Hagar in 
the wilderness, " Whence earnest thou ? " You were not 
always in this wilderness ; whence did you come ? Do you 
not look back to a home from which your thought has 
wandered, a house of faith in which you once abode in 
confidence and peace ? I am speaking now in parables, 
remember ; it is not of the literal home where your father 
and mother dwelt of which I am speaking, but rather of 
that edifice of sacred thoughts and firm persuasions and 
earnest purposes and joyful hopes in which your soul was 
sheltered and comforted in the days of your childhood. 
Was there not for you, in those earlier days, a spiritual 
tabernacle of this sort, a house not made with hands, in 
which you found protection and peace ? The hymn that 
we sing, sometimes, helps me express my thought : 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. 163 

" Dear Comforter, eternal Love, 
If thou wilt stay with me, 
Of lowly thoughts and simple ways 
I'll build a house for thee." 

« In some such house as that, built of lowly thoughts 
and simple ways, of humble prayers and faithful services, 
your soul was wont to dwell, in days perhaps not long- 
departed. I want you to look back to that' life and think it 
all over. Doubtless there were perplexities and difficulties 
that you now recall. Doubtless that belief in which you 
were trained had in it some elements of ignorance and 
darkness. There were gloomy corners in it, and chinks 
through which the bitter winds of a rigorous and lifeless 
dogmatism sometimes blew ; nevertheless it gave you such 
shelter, such cheer, such outlook as you have never found 
since you left it. Was there not, I ask you, in the Christian 
faith of that past time, not only a comfort and a solace, but 
an inspiration, an invigoration, a bracing energy that you 
do not find in the dim and dismal negations of the present 
time ? wanderer, astray in the bleak wilderness of 
doubt, whence earnest thou ? 

But this is not the only question. " Whither wilt thou 
go ?" Tarry here you cannot ; here is no continuing city. 
Agnosticism is not the end, barren and profitless as it is. 
The road that you are travelling leads down to Egypt, — to 
" a land of darkness as darkness itself, and where the light 
is as darkness." Did you imagine that by breaking away 
from the bonds of the historic faith, and going in search of 
new light in unknown paths, you would escape all difficul- 
ties of thought ? You have found out by this time that 
you were mistaken. The old faith did not make everything 



164 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

plain, and therefore you abandoned it. Is everything plain 
now ? Are there no mysteries unsolved ? 

Every man must have some sort of theory by which to 
explain the universe. The savage has his theory ; no civil- 
ized man can live without one. Me may not undertake to 
teach it ; he may not hold it very firmly ; but some kind of 
notion about how things came to be he must have. A clear 
and sheer agnosticism will content no man. Some of our 
scientific people profess agnosticism, but they are forever 
thrusting in our faces their theories of the origin of things. 
And all possible theories on this question of origins reduce 
to these : Theism, Pantheism, Atheism. You may believe 
that there is a God, who is the author of the universe; 
pu may believe that the universe itself is God; you may 
believe that there is no God, and that all things are the 
result of blind chance. One of these opinions every man 
who thinks must hold, explicitly or implicitly. The agnos- 
tic position cannot be a permanent position. No man will 
stay in that wilderness. And to you the voice comes in that 
wilderness, " Whither wilt thou go ? " You have turned 
away from the old faith of Christian Theism, and there is 
nowhere for you to go but to Pantheism or to Atheism. 
And these are only different names for the same benighted 
land. There is no light in either of them. They will not 
satisfy your heart. They will not satisfy your imagination. 
They will not satisfy your reason. There are difficulties 
connected with the old Biblical theory — the theory that the 
universe is the orderly creation under Law of an infinite 
personal God; but the difficulties connected with this 
theory are trifling compared with those that arise from the 
attempt to explain the universe by the theories of Atheism 



HAGAE IN THE WILDERNESS. 165 

or of Pantheism. Try to account for all the things that 
you know on the supposition that the All is God or that 
there is no God, and you soon find yourself in the midst of 
endless contradictions and absurdities. I am talking now 
simply as a thinking man ; I am discussing the problem 
merely as a problem of reason ; and I say that there is no 
light in the Egypt of Atheism or of Pantheism that clears 
up the mystery of the universe ; that there is no relief for 
any thorough thinker in either of them ; nay, that they 
plunge us into a darkness that can be felt. Like that 
monumental Egyptian architecture of which we spoke, 
these theories show us the mind of man mastered and 
overwhelmed by the downpull of material forces. Theism, 
Christian theism, the doctrine of a Divine Father revealed 
to men in the person of a Redeemer, does give a reason for 
the universe, and does introduce into human history a 
grand purpose and an intelligible order ; but Atheism and 
Pantheism leave us in blank dismay before a problem that 
seems to have no rational solution. 

And if the mental darkness into which they conduct us 
is so dense, what shall we say of the moral darkness in 
which they envelope us ; of the blotting from our sky of 
every star of hope ; of the quenching of that torch of Bible 
truth by which our feet are guided through this land of 
shadows ; of the extinguishment of our faith in the infinite 
love of God, which is the inspiration of all our holiest 
endeavors ? 

No, my friend, I tell you truly, you who have lost your 
hold on the great spiritual verities and are wandering in the 
wilderness of spiritual doubt, you can not tarry where you 
are; you must go further; and every step you go in the 



166 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

path that you are now travelling takes you nearer to a 
region where there is no ray of light or hope, a land of 
darkness and of the shadow of death. Can you not see, is 
it not clear, that you would better turn your face toward the 
spiritual home from which you have been wandering ? I 
know what you are saying, and it is true — that you cannot 
force your mind into accepting what does not seem to you 
rational. I do not ask you to do that ; all I ask is that you 
should soberly think of what you have left behind, and of 
what is before you if you go on. Rest for the thought, 
comfort for the heart there is none in the abysses of nega- 
tion toward which your feet are tending ; they offer you no 
inspiration for the present and no hope for the future. 
This is plain as the sun in the heavens. And I am sure 
that if you will but pause and think ; if you will let the 
angel of memory touch the chords that once vibrated with 
tender feeling ; if you will gather round yourself again the 
associations of your earlier years : if you will put yourself 
into a friendly and hospitable attitude toward the old Bible 
faith, ready to accept all of it that approves itself to your 
intelligence and your sense of need — no more — you will 
still find in it more light for your mind, more invigoration 
for your virtue and more joy for your heart than you can 
find anywhere else in the world. Perhaps the old spiritual 
house in which your youth was nurtured may need enlarge- 
ment in its intellectual part. Enlarge it, then ! There is 
room on its strong foundations to build a house of faith 
large enough for the amplest intelligence. If there are 
gloomy corners in it into which the light ought to be let, let 
in the light! If there are chinks through which the bitter 
winds of a fatalistic dogmatism blow, stop them ! If there 



HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. lf)7 

are poisonous vines that have fastened on its walls strip 
them off! It is the faith that we cherish, and not its flaws, 
nor its parasites. 

It is a precious faith, a glorious hope, a mighty inspir- 
ation that the old Bible offers still to those who will take it 
in its simplicity and rest in its strong assurances. It was 
the staff on which the patriarchs leaned, as they trod the 
land of promise ; it was the mantle of might that the 
prophets wore, handed down from one generation to 
another ; it is the energy that has kindled the hearts and 
the lips of apostles and missionaries in all the ages ; it has 
lightened the shackles of the slave ; it has cheered the toil 
of the patient workman in shop and field ; it has given to 
weary watchers songs in the night season ; it has fallen in 
low tones from the lips of happy mothers as they crooned 
the lullaby ; and when the casket has stood in the cradle's 
place, and the happy song has changed to a wail, it has 
poured into the broken heart the healing of its hope ; it has 
strengthened many a pilgrim going down into the valley of 
the shadow, and has left upon the marble brow its parting 
smile of peace. Happy are they who have never lost this 
heritage of faith ; blessed are they who, having forsaken its 
comfort, and known the desolation of the wilderness of 
doubt, come home before nightfall to its shelter and its 
rest ! 



THE FUTILITY OF THE SENSUOUS. 

John vi: 62. 

" What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was 
before f ' ' 

This is part of that conversation between Jesus and 
the people which took place on the day following the 
feeding of the five thousand. He had gone back from the 
farther shore of Tiberias to Capernaum, to escape from 
the throng ; but the people had followed him, and were now 
industriously questioning him. Some measure of earnest- 
ness in the pursuit of truth seems to have been awakened 
in them by their contact with him ; some of their questions 
reveal a quickened perception of spiritual needs. Yet 
the tone of most of them indicates that the questioners 
were sensation-seekers, rather than searchers after truth ; 
that they were hungering and thirsting for prodigies, more 
than for righteousness. " What shall we do that we might 
work the works of God?" they ask him. A great question, 
truly, if one gives it the right meaning. But if one only 
means by it what Simon the sorcerer meant — "How shall 
I be able to astonish the populace by preternatural signs?" 
it shows that he who proposes it, like Simon Magus, has no 



170 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

part nor lot in the great matter that brought our Lord to 
earth ; that his state of mind is one to which no real 
spiritual gift is accessible. 

The one urgent question of this multitude that now 
were thronging about our Lord, was this: "What sign 
showest thou then, that we may see and believe thee? what 
dost thou work?" They had just seen one marvel, and 
the effect upon them was to whet their appetite for the 
marvellous. They wanted to witness more wonders. Our 
Lord tells them, indeed, that they were seeking him not 
because they had seen the miracles but because they had 
eaten of the loaves ; but what he means by that saying 
plainly is that they had failed to see the real meaning 
and intent of the miracle. It was not any want of suscep- 
tibility to the marvellous with which he was reproaching 
them ; for one of the complaints that he often makes 
against them is that they are a generation always seeking 
for a sign. That is what they are seeking now. And 
therefore all his replies to their questions serve only to 
baffle them. 

" Moses sent us manna," they cry : " let us see you 
bring down a shower of it." 

" Sf a y>" he replies : " that was not the true bread from 
heaven that Moses gave you ; my Father is giving you now, 
if you would but receive it, the true bread from heaven. 
I came down from heaven to bring you that. I am the 
bread of life." 

And then he went on to unfold to them, in words whose 
meaning they scarcely comprehended, the wonderful doc- 
trine of the communication of spiritual life to men by their 
union with himself. But doubtless the one thing that 



THE FUTILITY OF I HE SENSUOUS. 171 

puzzled them most was his assertion that he had come 
down from heaven. 

"TheJews then murmured at him because he said, 
I am the bread which came down from heaven. And 
they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose 
father and mother we know? How is it, then, that he 
saith, I came down from heaven?" 

The coming down from heaven meant to them, only 
the descent of a human body out of the upper sky through 
the clouds to the earth. This they had not seen. If this 
had really taken place, ivhy had tbey not seen it? Had 
they been defrauded by the concealment from them of this 
spectacle? How could this Jesus expect them to be his 
disciples if he kept such a taking entertainment as this 
from their sight? The truth was that they did not believe 
the story of his coming down from heaven at all. If he 
had done a thing of that kind he would not have done it in 
a corner. It was incredible and preposterous. And over 
this doubt, not only the multitude of the Jews, but some 
of those who had enrolled themselves among his disciples, 
stumbled and fell. 

That the mental difficulty of the Jews was something 
of this nature seems clear. Doubtless they were offended 
by his mystical sayings about eating his flesh and drinking 
his blood ; but doubtless the thing that was hardest for 
them to receive was this very saying that he had come 
down from heaven. At any rate this is the unspoken cavil 
to which our Lord addresses his reply : " Does this offend 
you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up 
where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth, the 



172 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto you 
they are spirit and they are life." 

Is not the meaning plain? "You find fault," the 
Master says, "because you did not see the Son of man 
coming down out of heaven. The incarnation is without 
meaning to you because your eyes did not behold this 
physical prodigy. But what good would it have done you 
if you had seen it? And suppose that you should see the 
Son of man — this very body of flesh and blood — ascend- 
ing through the air and should watch it until it was out 
of sight. That would be a still greater wonder, but what 
would it avail you to see it? It would gratify your 
curiosity, but what effect would it have upon your' charac- 
ters? What real need of your souls would it supply? 
How much better off would you be after you had seen it? 
It would be a physical marvel, nothing more. It would 
thrill your senses ; it would make your nerves to tingle ; but 
it is not by such sensations as these that men are saved. 
It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. 
And although I do show you signs and wonders, they are 
only as object lessons through which I seek to convey to 
you spiritual truths. When you see nothing in a miracle 
but the display of physical power you do not see the real 
miracle at all, and what you do see is an injury rather than 
a benefit to you." 

The subject thus suggested to us is the futility of the 
sensuous as a factor in the religious life, — the small value 
that must be attached to any revelation that is addressed 
primarily and mainly to our senses. 

I am sure that there is among us not a little hankering 
after this very thing that the Lord here teaches to regard 



THE FUTILITY OF THE SENSUOUS. 17 S 

as a thing of little moment. " If we could only witness a 
miracle," say some good Christians, — "if we could only 
see water turned to wine or dead men raised to life, if we 
could only hear a voice speaking to us out of heaven 
— above all, if we could see the Lord Jesus himself in the 
flesh, and hear his voice, — how it would help us! It 
must have been a great deal easier for the disciples who 
saw all these things to follow the Savior ; and we cannot 
understand how the Jews who witnessed them could have 
denied him." To all such as these the Master's searching 
question comes, "What and if you should see and hear all 
these things? What relation would such visions and signs 
have to your spiritual life? Suppose that you should 
witness what purported to be a veritable miracle ; what 
good would it do you? 

" It would show me God," answers one. " It would 
give me a demonstration of his existence and his power 
that I greatly long for. It would make me certain of 
a great fact, which I now believe, but of which I am 
not certain." 

Would it? I must be allowed to intimate my doubts. 
I do not believe that you have closely studied this problem 
of mental certitude. You say that a miracle would demon- 
strate the existence of God. Well, grant that, for a 
moment. But you could never be absolutely certain that 
the thing you thought a miracle was not an illusion of 
the senses. You have seen tricks of jugglers that looked 
like miracles. For your life you could not distinguish 
them from miracles. Yet you knew that somehow the 
magician had made your senses deceive you. You know 
that your senses do sometimes deceive you. You cannot 



174 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

put absolute faith in their testimony. Now a miracle must 
be verified, if it is verified at all, by tbe senses. What 
is a miracle? It is "a deviation," says Webster, "from the 
known laws of nature" " A miracle," says President 
Seelye in Johnson's Cyclopedia, " is a sensible event wrought 
by God in attestation of the truth. It must therefore occur 
in nature, else it would not be apprehensible to our senses." 
It is to the physical senses, then, that every miracle is 
addressed. The only testimony by which it can be estab- 
lished is the testimony of the senses. And you and I 
know that, while our senses can be trusted well enough for 
the common operations of life, they can yet be deceived ; 
and we, who have been fooled more than once by optical 
illusions and by the tricks of jugglers, could never feel 
absolutely certain that we had seen a miracle. But the 
difficulty is deeper still. 

You say that a veritable miracle would prove to you 
the existence of God. But a miracle, according to the 
authority I have before quoted, is " a counteraction of 
nature by the Author of nature." In other words it is 
an interruption of the order of Nature by the Power that 
established the order. Such an interruption, you think, 
would be a signal proof to yon of the presence and power 
of God. You would feel sure that God exists, because 
none but He who established the order could interrupt it. 
But this reasoning involves a fallacy. The condition of 
the miracle, according to your own conception, is the order, 
of which the miracle is the interruption. If it were not for 
the order, established beforehand, there could not be a 
miracle. The order must exist or there could he no inter- 
ruption of it. And t he order, according to your own theory, 



THE FUTILITY OE THE SENSUOUS. 175 

implies an Orderer. A miracle is a counteraction of 
Nature, by the Author of Nature. But Nature must be 
made to act before it can be counteracted. And the Power 
that counteracts it is the same Power that caused it to act. 
You assume the existence of God, then, in the expectation 
of a miracle. If you do not believe beforehand in a 
divinely established order of nature, you cannot believe in 
a miracle. "The miracle," says President Bascom, "rests 
back for its support on the personal being of God ; without 
this prior doctrine there is no opportunity for it." 

There is, therefore, a subtle fallacy in this notion that a 
real miracle would demonstrate to you the existence of 
God. The thing to be proved is assumed ; and your 
argument has no basis until it is assumed. If you believed 
in God a miracle might authenticate to you some special 
command of God ; but the belief in God must exist before 
the miracle can be looked for. 

Now reflect for a moment. Which, after all, is the 
clearer and more convincing proof of the divine presence 
and power, the existing order of Nature, or some sudden 
and violent interruption of that order ? Take the great law 
of gravitation which keeps all the matter of the universe in 
its thrall ; which holds the worlds in their orbits round the 
sun, and marshalls them all in perfect order, so that each 
one of them makes its daily and yearly revolution in exact 
time ; so that the position of each one of them in the 
heavens at any moment can be predicted with confidence ; 
so that seasons and months and years and days go on 
in their unbroken march, and we have the light for labor 
and the darkness for rest, and the ebbing and the flowing 
of the tides, and cold and heat and sunshine and rain, and 



176 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

all the marvellous procession of events and products that 
makes life possible and delightful on this planet — this 
great law of gravitation, under which all these things take 
place with such beneficent regularity — is not this, to your 
mind, a more convincing proof of the existence of God 
than any violent counteraction of that law could possibly 
be? Suppose you should see a heavy granite boulder fly up 
into the air. That would be an apparent counteraction of 
the law of gravitation ; and, if it were not the effect of an 
illusion, or of some unseen force, and if the phenomenon 
were produced by the divine volition (of which you could 
never be sure) — it would be a miracle. But would the 
sight of such a phenomenon as this, if you were perfectly 
sure that it was caused by the divine volition, be to } 7 ou a 
proof of God as strong as that which you see in the 
constant working of the law thus set aside? To my own 
mind, the order is the marvellous thing, the divine thing ; 
and while I believe that the Power that ordained the order 
may and does sometimes interrupt it for moral purposes, I 
see a stronger proof of his being in the regularity of its 
action than in the occasional irregularities produced by the 
divine volition. 

Ruskin puts the same thought with his accustomed 
vividness when he says, for substance, " I should not be 
astonished to see the sun stand still in the heavens. I have 
always been wondering that it does not stop. The marvel- 
lous thing to me is that it keeps going on." 

A man visits an orphan asylum and inspects it from 
top to bottom, finding on every floor the most complete 
provision for all the wants of the children, for their 
comfort, their protection, their instruction, their enjoyment; 



THE FUTILITY OF THE SENSUOUS. 177 

everything that the benignant wisdom of good men, and 
the tender care of good women can invent is brought in 
here to bless and brighten the lives of these little ones ; and 
the visitor observes all this good work going on day by day 
with order and grace, and sees nothing in it ; but by and 
by somebody sends up a toy balloon from the play ground 
to please the children, and in that he discovers the sign of 
the presence of a loving will, a sign that he had never seen 
before. In all the vast provision that was made regularly 
and daily for their highest needs he found no evidence of a 
beneficent force working for their welfare ; in this one little 
innocent gratification of their love of the wonderful he does 
find a reason for believing that somebody loves them and 
cares for. them. 

Such a mind as that we should call childish ; but it is 
exactly the same quality of mind that discovers a clearer 
proof of God in an occasional miracle than in the orderly 
manifestation of his power and goodness everywhere in 
nature. 

That miracles have their use I do not doubt ; but it is 
only in the childhood of the world that they can be 
frequently employed. Certain it is that God does not think 
it wise to authenticate his revelations to men in these days 
by miracles. That is not because he loves us less than he 
loved the people of former times, or because he is unwilling 
to communicate his will to us as fully and clearly as he 
communicated it to them. He chooses for each age such 
methods of revelation as are suited to the age ; to childish 
ages he makes himself known by those signs, which will 
most clearly attest to them his presence ; to more mature 
and thoughtful ages he is revealed in ways altogether 



It 8 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

different. And just as soon as the idea of the divineness 
of natural law begins to get possession of the minds of 
men the miracle begins to lose its importance as a means 
of authenticating divine messages. Even in the childish 
ages, as we have seen, the appetite for miracles as mere 
prodigies, and the tendency to forget all about the spiritual 
lessons they are intended to convey, need to be constantly 
rebuked ; but we who live in an age when the evidences of 
of God in the order of the universe are so many and so 
convincing, shall deserve a severer condemnation if we join 
ourselves to the multitude who are always " seeking for a 
sign." 

The evidential value of miraculous signs must there- 
fore, in these days, be small ; and those who covet them as 
helps to their faith must be persons of weak faith. There 
are numberless better and stronger reasons for believing 
that God is, than any miracle could show us. He who asks 
for a wonder to be wrought to convince him of the great 
first truth of religion, is like a man who stands out of 
doors under the open sky of a cloudless noon, and asks 
some one to strike a match that he may have a little light 
to see by. 

And if a prodigy, wrought by some unseen power in 
physical nature, can have but little effect upon our minds, 
much less can it reach and purify our hearts. Experience 
abundantly proves that the people who are hungriest for 
such prodigies are by no means the hungriest for righteous- 
ness. The addiction to the preternatural is commonly the 
mark of a weak if not a corrupt character. The people 
who are always in pursuit of such signs and wonders arc 
not, as a class, the people who are the most faithful in their 



THE FUTILITY OF THE SENSUOUS. 179 

homes, the kindest to their neighbors, the most industrious 
and orderly citizens, the most upright and honorable 
business men. Quite the contrary. And there is nothing 
strange about this ; for those who give all their thought to 
mere physical prodigies, as all these are, must needs lose 
their grasp of spiritual and moral truths. 

It is by this standard that we must judge the alleged 
marvels of spiritism. They tell us great stories about the 
things that are done ; the visions, the noises, the material- 
izations, the messages : I do not wish to answer with 
disrespect, but I simply ask : " Well ! what of them ? 
You have seen them all : what good have they done you ? 
Have they delivered you from one easily besetting sin ? 
Have they helped you to live a purer and an honester and 
a more charitable life ? Can you point me to a community 
anywhere, that is addicted to these marvels, whose social 
life has been made cleaner and sweeter and worthier by 
means of them ? If they have no such effect, then the 
most marvellous of them are not worth seeing." 

"Ah," says one, " but they have done this much for 
me ; they have made future existence certain." 

But what sort of future existence? What kind of 
people are they whose existence is thus revealed to you ? 
You may have had better success than I in your search for 
truth or wisdom in their revelations ; but I have not yet 
found a gleam of genius or a spark of high thought, or a 
pulsation of noble feeling in all their communications. So 
far as we can judge them from their words they are a set of 
moon-struck maunderers who mistake big words for great 
thoughts and hifalutin for philosophy. Messages come to 
us which purport to be the words of men who once lived on 



180 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the earth, and who while here had profound and inspiring 
truths to tell us, and from whom noble strains of music 
and eloquence were wont to reach our ears. If these words 
that are now repeated to us as their words are really theirs, 
then they are rapidly verging toward imbecility. God 
forbid that we should continue to exist after death if we 
must degenerate after this fashion ! 

As Dr. Boynton says, in " The Undiscovered Country " : 
" If men live again, it has been found that they live only in 
a frivolous tradition of their life in this world. Poor 
creatures! they seem lamed of half themselves, — the 
better half that aspires and advances ; they hover in a 
dull stagnation, just above this ball of mire ; they have 
nothing to tell us ; they bring us no comfort and no 
wisdom. Annihilation is better than such an immor- 
tality ! " 

So when you tell me that you have wonderful 
communications from another world I only ask you, What 
of them ? Do they tell you anything worth knowing ? Do 
they show you a life worth living ? Do they quicken the 
growth of trust and truth, of righteousness and love within 
your souls ? By such fruits as these ye shall know 
them. 

Again, there is a lesson in this discussion for those who 
are always looking for God in unusual places and in 
exceptional manifestations. It is a childish conception, 
as we have seen, that discovers God more readily in an 
interruption of nature than in the order of nature. And 
something of this childishness shows itself in our religious 
life. We are fain to think that the divine truth and love 
reach men only through occasional, unexpected, irregular 



THE FUTILITY OF THE SENSUOUS. 181 

channels ; that the spirit of God is much more likely to 
visit an extra service than a regular service ; that if we 
leave our ordinary duties and go about sight seeing we 
shall be more sure to meet him than if we stay at home 
and attend to them. The fact is that it is not in the 
miraculous but in the natural ; not in the unusual but in 
the ordinary ; not in strange places but in familiar places ; 
not in hunting after extra duties but in doing common 
duties faithfully that we have the strongest reasons to 
expect his presence and his help. The one blessed and 
comforting thing about God's grace is the homeliness of it ; 
it is as common, as close, as unobtrusive as air or sunlight ; 
and it shows a dull perception to go about looking for it 
with much ado. 

The things that a man's real life consists in are not the 
things that can be seen with the physical eye. Truth, 
purity, love, these are the only enduring possessions ; and 
these are beyond the reach of our senses. Eye hath not 
seen nor ear heard neither have entered into the imagina- 
tion of man the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his 
Spirit. Hath revealed them ; not will reveal them. The 
great verities of the Kingdom of God are made known to 
men in this world. All that makes heaven precious is 
bestowed on us here ; but it is not revealed to our senses ; 
they who are always looking for marvels never see it ; 
spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The faith that 
cleanses the heart and gives us an inward and abiding hope 
of immortality is nourished neither on materializations nor 
on miracles. Not in looking on strange sights nor in 
listening to unearthly noises is its vision cleared and its 



182 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

grasp of things eternal strengthened ; it is with different 
faculties that it lays hold on eternity. 

"As when, in silence, vernal showers 
Descend and cheer the fainting flowers, 
So, in the secresy of love, 
Falls the sweet influence from above. 
That heavenly influence let me find 
In secret silence of the mind." 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 

I Kings v: 13, 14. 

"And King Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel, and the levy was 
thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand 
a month by courses ; a month they were in Lebanon, and two 
months at home." 

Solomon, the son of David, had just ascended the 
throne of his father and had set himself about the building 
of a temple at Jerusalem. An alliance with the neighbor- 
ing king of Tyre had been negotiated, by which Solomon 
had secured a large force of skilled workmen to superntend 
the erection of this great structure ; and thirty thousand 
of the Hebrews had been detailed to assist the Tyrian 
artisans. But these thirty thousand were not, as the text 
informs us, all to labor continuously upon the work. 
Solomon divided them into three courses, or reliefs, and 
sent them to Lebanon, where the timber was preparing, ten 
thousand a month ; so that each of these three divisions 
was one month at Lebanon and two months at home. 

Probably no work was ever undertaken to which greater 
sacredness or importance was attached than this work of 
building the temple at Jerusalem. The men who wrought 



184 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

upon that edifice were, no doubt, impressed with the belief 
that they would never be called to any public service more 
holy or more momentous. And yet, by the direction of 
their king, these men were required to devote to the 
performance of their home duties twice as much time as 
they devoted to this sacred and honorable public work. 
The inference is not unwarrantable that, Solomon being 
judge, the home is holier than the temple; that the duties 
which belong to home are more urgent than those which 
belong to any other station. 

The Thanksgiving day is the home festival ; more and 
more it is taking on this character. The public and 
national uses of the day are not neglected, and will not be ; 
but the emphasis of the observance rests upon the domestic 
festivities. It is a day for the reunion of scattered families, 
for the renewing upon the household altar of the flames 
of parental and filial love. Therefore I shall be justified 
in seeking to draw your thoughts toward the building and 
ruling of the home. 

Every human being ought to be a member of some 
household, and every household ought to have a fixed place 
of residence, a place of its own — in one word, both short 
and sweet, a home. That is the only right way of living. 
A home is, for every human being, the first condition of the 
highest happiness and the best growth. No one ought to 
be satisfied until he has supplied it for himself. Probably 
a larger proportion of the people of this country than 
of any other have homes of their own. Yet the homes of 
New England and of America do not contain all the 
population. There are among us a multitude of homeless 
ones. Of these there are several sorts. 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 185 

First, there are the sturdy tramps, who go wandering 
about from city to city and from hamlet to hamlet, stopping 
where night finds them, and quite literally obeying the 
Scripture which bids us take no thought for the morrow. 
The sudden and large increase in this class of our popula- 
tion is somewhat alarming. The complaint of their 
presence is heard everywhere. Doubtless the division of 
labor, and the disturbances created by the shifting of our 
industries may partly explain this evil growth ; but we 
must remember that evils are in this way set on foot which 
are not easily subdued. When men take up the trade 
of vagrancy, they are too apt to follow it as long as they 
live. We cannot afford to have this subdivision of our 
homeless class increase. 

Next are the gypsies, that dusky race from over the 
seas, who have managed for so many years to puzzle the 
ethnologists and frighten the children ; scarcely a town in 
the land but has them now and then for a nine days' 
wonder, — camping in the suburbs, peddling their small 
wares from house to house, with maledictions muttered 
between clenched teeth upon those who will not buy ; 
passing through the village streets quite unconscious of 
inquisitive and suspicious glances that greet them ; and 
never, I suppose, feeling a pang of regret as they look upon 
the pleasant homes where families live from generation to 
generation. Here is a whole race that for centuries has 
been homeless, and for that reason has no history, no 
literature, not much religion if any, and hardly any 
knowledge of the arts of civilization. Such possessions 
and acquirements as these are scarcely within the reach 
of people who have no homes. 



186 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

Next after the gypsies there is a considerable class 
of persons who are too restless to stay long in any place, 
and whose lives are spent in constant migrations from one 
place to another ; who tarry nowhere long enough to get 
wanted. Some of them are poor, and, because rolling- 
stones gather no moss, the} r are continually growing 
poorer ; others are well-to-do, but their anxiety to do 
better keeps them constantly in motion. Our floating 
population — that part of our population which is con- 
tinually afloat — is very large, as any pastor in a city like 
this soon finds. 

Somewhere in this category I am afraid that we must 
put the clergy. As a class, they are wanderers. There is a 
wide difference between the theories of different denomina- 
tions about this matter, but the difference in the practice is 
not so wide. The blame of this unsettled condition of 
clerical life is partly with the people and partly with the 
minister. Sometimes the people become dissatisfied. The 
pews are not all rented ; the debts are not aJl paid ; the 
Sunday-school classes want teachers ; the prayer-meeting is 
not so full nor so interesting as it ought to be ; there are 
not many conversions, and they themselves are not stirred 
up to duty as they ought to be ; therefore, " Go to," they 
say, "let us dismiss our minister. He is the man whom we 
employ to get all these things done, and, since they are not 
done, we will make it either hot or cold for him until he 
takes the hint and goes away." That is the way they 
sometimes manage it. But sometimes the minister himself 
is restless; does not know when he is well off; thinks 
because certain individuals in his parish are afflicted with 
an infirmity popularly known as human nature, therefore 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 187 

he will go away in search of a parish in which there shall 
be no human nature. We all know where that pilgrimage 
ends. 

Next after the floating population comes that large 
class of persons who have a local residence but not a local 
habitation ; who continue to live in the same community, 
but do not live in homes ; who make their abode in such 
public residences as hotels or boarding houses. Now, as 
respects these, it must be said that many of them are 
compelled to adopt this manner of life. Young men and 
women whose homes have been broken up by the death 
of their parents, or who have been called forth from the 
habitation of their childhood to seek education and liveli- 
hood in distant places, cannot, of course, have homes of 
their own. In every large town there is a considerable 
number of these young persons, and the sympathies of 
Christian people are often appealed to in their behalf. 
How to reach them, how to shelter and to save them is a 
problem to which we are constantly summoned. Various 
public provisions for their entertainment and diversion are 
suggested ; reading-rooms, Holly-tree inns and the like ; 
and these are all well in their wa} 7 , but the kindest thing 
of all would be, if we could do it, to introduce every one 
of them into some good, orderly household. Homes are 
what these young people need more than anything else. 
Reading-rooms are good, and other good places of resort 
may be provided, but there is no place like home. Many 
of us are so circumstanced that we cannot enlarge our 
families, but where it can be done, it is one of the best 
ways of doing good. You remember that incident that was 
current in the form of verse, not many years ago, about the 



188 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

young man who had died and who was being buried among 
strangers, to whose coffin a kind lady came just before it 
was closed, saying, "Let me kiss him for his mother." 
That was a very beautiful thing to think of and to do ; but 
let us not wait, my friends, until these young men and 
women are dead before we show our interest in them. The 
mother will thank you far more for saying a kind word 
to her boy while he is yet alive, or for supplying to him, as 
well as you can, that motherly service which she longs 
to bestow upon him, than for kissing his cold forehead 
in his coffin. And the good Master himself, who knows all 
about the hardships of homelessness, will tell you at last 
that, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of 
these, you have done it unto Him ! 

Besides these homeless young men and women who 
constitute so large a class in all our larger towns, there 
are many others, not young, whose lives are spent in hotels 
and boarding-houses. Some of these are prevented by 
impaired health, or other sufficient reasons, from assuming 
the care of a home. It is sometimes necessary to live 
in this manner, but the necessity is to be deplored. I 
know that some of those who have in charge these public 
dwellings do exert themselves to furnish to those who live 
with them as many as possible of the comforts and enjoy- 
ments of home, and this is a very praiseworthy endeavor. 
I have myself experienced much kindness at the hands 
of persons of this class, in former days. Nevertheless, life 
in public dwellings is a poor substitute for home life. It is 
in the nature of the case quite impossible that one should 
find the freedom, the seclusion and the repose of home 
anywhere away from home. The organizing principle of 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 189 

the hotel or the boarding-house is "business." Sometimes 
this hard fact is greatly mitigated by the good nature of 
the landlord or the landlady ; but it is the fact after all. 
Of course it is. They are not actuated wholly, or mainly, 
by charitable considerations. It is a way they have taken 
to earn a livelihood, or to increase their income. If the 
business did not pay, they would not follow it. That is no 
discredit to them. It is a necessary and even honorable 
business ; and they are no more selfish in their pursuit of it 
than other human beings are in the pursuit of gain. 

The organizing principle of the home must be, on 
the other hand, good-will and affection. The interest 
which its inmates have in each other is not a commercial 
but a benevolent interest. The question with each is, not 
" How can I get the most pecuniary advantage out of this 
relation?" but rather "What can I do to increase the 
common welfare and the common happiness?" The law 
of the home life is the law of love ; and, although it is 
often indifferently obeyed, it is always the recognized ideal. 
Surely the atmosphere of the dwelling in which love is 
the law must be the best atmosphere for any human being 
to live in. Those who are at present obliged to live in 
these public dwellings will never, therefore, I trust, come 
to regard it as the proper way of living, but always 
recognize it as their misfortune — to be borne, while it 
must, with becoming patience. If the opportunity of 
making themselves a home ever comes to them, let them 
joyfully embrace it, knowing that the best of all worldly 
fortunes is thus put within their reach. 

One reason why every young man and woman setting 
out in life together ought to have a home of their own 



190 THTNGS NEW AND OLD. 

is found in the fact that they can gratify their tastes and 
manifest the life that is in them in no other way. Of 
course they will consult their own preferences in arranging 
for themselves this home. If they build the house, they 
will build it after their own notions ; they will put into it 
their own thought and feeling. The house represents them. 
The building of a house is thus often an important part 
of a man's education. His constructiveness and his judg- 
ment are greatly strengthened by the exercise. Wisdom is 
sometimes dearly bought in this way, it is true, but wisdom 
that costs the most is commonly worth the most. If, 
instead of building the home, the couple only furnish and 
arrange it to suit themselves, that is a pleasant and a 
useful work. There will be limits to their expenditures, 
and many things which they desire they will not be able to 
obtain, but these limitations will not arise out of the taste 
or the will of somebody else. Their surroundings will be 
more perfectly adjusted to their own wants. There will 
be a greater measure of harmony between their life and 
their conditions than would be possible under any other 
circumstances. 

Another, and the strongest justification of the home 
life, is in the fact that there are certain affections of the 
soul that can be developed in no other manner of life. The 
domestic virtues and graces are not easily described or 
catalogued, but they form an important part of the best 
human character. There are sentiments, sympathies, habi- 
tudes of thought, which are native to the home, and which 
are essential to the best growth and highest development 
of human beings. Domesticity gives to every beautiful 
character an added charm. No man is truly good who 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 191 

is not good at home ; and the best men are always best on 
the side that touches home. Home is the school where 
human beings learn how to be tender and pitiful, patient 
and forbearing; how to turn duty into joy and self-denial 
into a sweet and pleasant sacrifice. For the cultivation 
of these higher forms of morality there is no place like 
home. Hospitality, one of the oldest and most beautiful 
of human virtues, is of course impossible to one who has 
no home. 

Public spirit is fed and fostered at the fireside. The 

man who has a home of his own is interested that the 

i 

community in which he lives should be lacking in nothing 
that could help to make it desirable as a place of residence. 
He who makes himself a householder by that act gives a 
hostage to society for his good behavior and his devotion to 
public interests. Patriotism, too, has its foundations laid 
upon the hearthstones of the land. The patriot's love for 
his country is rooted and grounded in his love for his 
home. He knows that every assault upon the peace and 
prosperity of his country is an indirect assault upon his 
home, threatening its security and its permanence. Every 
new tribute of honor paid to his land, every new element of 
strength added to it, helps to make his home a surer and a 
dearer possession. You may estimate the strength of a 
nation by the number of its homes and the measure of the 
development of the domestic sentiments. The larger is the 
proportion of the population which dwells in homes, the 
more nearly invincible is that nation by internal foes or by 
foreign enemies. 



192 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

' ' ' Measure the frontiers ! ' shall it be sa^d ? 
'Count the ships,' in national vanity? 
Count the nation's heart-beats sooner! " 

And for the nation's heart-beats you must listen in the 
nation's homes. When the great mass of the people are 
not only householders but freeholders — when they own the 
homes they live in — the sentiment of patriotism finds its 
intensest development. It is quite impossible that any 
considerable government, whose domain is parceled out in 
small estates, owned by the people who occupy them, 
should be overthrown by seditions or conquered by rival 
powers. And therefore, that the national life may be 
invigorated, and the bond of union strengthened, wise 
statesmen will in all possible ways encourage the people in 
making themselves possessors of the homes in which they 
dwell. 

One prime cause of the strength of the North and the 
weakness of the South in the late war lay just here. The 
northern armies, to a far greater extent than the southern, 
were composed of men who were fighting for their homes 
and firesides. It was a conflict between two hostile politi- 
cal systems, and the northern soldiers knew it. The very 
watchword of the northern civilization was and is £i Free 
homes for all." The southern civilization provided no 
homes for any but the aristocratic classes. That was, at 
any rate, the tendency of things in that quarter. The 
North meant diffusion of wealth ; the South meant central- 
ization. It was a square fight between the plantation and 
the farm ; between the home of the northern freeholder on 
the one side, and the poor white's squatter shanty and the 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 193 

slave's hovel on the other. The issue to be decided was 
whether the system of large estates and privileged classes 
should overrun all the western territories and finally the 
northern states, or whether the system of small freeholds 
and equal rights should overspread the impoverished 
southern plains. That was the question that was settled by 
the war, and settled the right way. 

The strength of the home-sentiment in the heart of the 
soldier is well illustrated by the story of that loyal East 
Tennessean, told by himself to his nurse in the hospital : 
" They watched us a long time," he said, " me and some 
others. They thought we was a-goin' for the Union. We 
had made up our minds what to do. One night we went 
off. We made for where we thought the army was. The 
first night, we stayed in the woods. I laid the fire before 
I went. I laid her a good fire. At daylight we got to the 
top of the mountain, where we could look down on our 
homes behind us. They were getting up and building the 
fires. I saw my little home. The smoke was coming out 
of the chimney. She had to light it herself. I sat down 
on a flat rock and looked down into the valley. I wanted 
to see if the fire burned. Well (with a long sigh) it was 
my home. I suppose it was as sacred to me as any other 
man's home to him. But I had to turn my back on it — 
me and the others." 

No one who ever carried tidings from the home to the 
camp needs to be told that this love of home was in the 
hearts of many of the men in the ranks a continual inspir- 
ation. And an army composed of such soldiers never can 
be conquered. 

Such, then, are some of the uses of the home in 



194 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

developing individual and national virtues. I presume 
that, to most of you, the effort I have made to set forth the 
benefits of the home-life has seemed rather a labor of 
love than a labor of necessity. Most of you are sufficiently 
convinced already of the advantages of such a manner of 
life, and those who are now dwelling in other habitations 
are, no doubt, cherishing the expectation that you will 
sometime have homes of your own. Never lose your grasp 
upon that possibility. Bat, when you have secured for 
yourself a home, what shall it be ? How will you build 
it — not merely the walls and the partitions, but also the 
invisible spiritual temple, of which this outer structure is 
only the shrine ? 

Your home will be a place of comfort and repose. 
That, of course. You will take delight in contriving all its 
appointments so that the burdens of toil shall rest as 
lightly as possible upon those who have the ordering of it ; 
you will find pleasure in furnishing and arranging it, so far 
as you can, in such manner that gloom and cheerlessness 
shall be excluded, and it shall seem to be a true haven uf 
rest and good cheer to all upon whom its hospitable doors 
shall open. 

Your home will be a school of culture. I do not mean 
that you will fill it with pedagogic instruments and 
appliances ; but it will be so arranged as to educate by 
impression those who dwell within it. Probably few of as 
are fully aware how sensitive we are to the influence of 
external objects. A minister travelling in Vermont entered 
a farm-house, and fell into conversation with a farmer and 
his wife, persons in middle age. He inquired for their 
children, and learned that they had four boys, and that 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 195 

they are all at sea, following the hard trade of the sailor. 
" But how happened it," asked the minister, " that your 
boys should take such a fancy ? They never lived by the 
sea-shore." The good people could offer no explanation 
whatever. It was simply a notion, they said, and a strange 
one, they had always thought, but it was a very strong one, 
and they had found it impossible to dissuade the boys from 
their purpose. But, pretty soon, the minister was invited 
into the little room which served the family for parlor, and 
there, hanging over the mantlepiece, the only picture in the 
room, was a magnificent engraving of a ship under full sail. 
The parents said it had been hanging there ever since their 
boys were little children. Who could doubt that the daily 
sight of this beautiful picture had had much to do in 
inflaming the passions of these farmer's boys for the sea- 
faring life ? This is hardly an exaggerated instance of the 
effects produced upon our lives by the objects that sur- 
round us. Very much of our education comes thus, by 
impression. And, therefore, for the sake of cultivating, in 
this indirect way, grace and nobility of spirit in its inmates, 
every home should be made, without and within, as beauti- 
ful as possible. A vast amount of money is expended in 
dressing and in pampering the appetite which might with 
a truer economy be spent in adorning the home. Of all 
places the home should be made the most attractive. Noth- 
ing that art can do to increase the power of the spell by 
which it binds us should be left undone. The beauty 
that finds expression in sound, as well as the beauty that 
reveals itself in form and color, will be domiciled in your 
home. Good instruments of music are not only means 
of enjoyment but means of grace, oftentimes. Books will 



196 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

abound in your home. The library will be one of its 
choicest rooms. Upon its shelves will be found a careful 
collection, all the while growing, of books, old and new. 
You will curtail your expenses in many other directions 
sooner than in that. " When I get a little money," said 
Hugo Grotius, " I buy books ; if I have any left, I buy 
food and clothes." You will not fall into the delusion that 
the body is alone worthy of your care, and spend all your 
time in getting food to satisfy its unhealthy cravings, 
and garments of beauty to deck it withal, neglecting to 
provide stimulus and nutriment for the mind. You will 
not imitate the folly of those whose larders are always 
crammed with all manner of edibles, digestible and indi- 
gestible, but to whose stock of mental pabulum not a 
single book is added from one year's end to another. In 
short, you will remember that your home is for your spirit, 
at least as much as for your body, and you will try to make 
it minister to your higher nature quite as liberally as to 
your lower nature. 

Your home will also be a place of enjoyment. Inno- 
cent play will often be in order. If there are young folks 
in the house, they will more easily be kept at home by 
liberal provision in this direction than in any other way. 
There's no place like home for the young folks, especially in 
the evening ; and everything that can be properly done 
should be done to make the home the pleasantest place in 
the world for them. The grown people should not only 
tolerate the children's pastimes, they should participate in 
them for their own sakes, as well as for the children's. If 
every day they would unbend a little, throwing off the 
stateliness of the street and the drawing-room, dismissing 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 197 

care and labor and joining with the children in some 
merry, rollicking sport, they would renew their youth 
every day. 

Finally, your home, when it is builded, will be, I trust, 
a sanctuary of religion. There will be an altar there on 
which, every day, the sacrifices of prayer and praise will be 
laid. You will not try to keep a house without having God 
in it. You will not go on from year to year partaking of 
the blessings of the Heavenly Father, and never thanking 
him for them. You will not forget to place it as one of the 
daily lessons before every inmate of the house that there is 
another and a better home, of which this earthly habitation 
is but an imperfect type, a home into which there shall in 
no wise enter anything that defileth, neither whatsoever 
worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are 
written in the Lamb's book of life. The children of your 
household will remember, when they are grown up, that 
their first impressions of the Christian life, and their 
strongest impulses to enter upon it, were furnished them in 
their earliest years at home. I know that I am speaking of 
that which ought to be, and I fear that I am also speaking 
of that which with some of .you is not. There are, I am 
afraid, before me dwellers in some homes where God is 
never acknowledged. They know that this is wrong, but it 
is a wrong that they have been slow in redressing. I 
beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that you 
delay no longer. Shall not the voice of thanksgiving and 
of consecrating prayer be heard in your home, to-day ? 

Such homes as this which I have been describing, 
filled with comfort, adorned with beauty, cheered by all 
manner of innocent pleasures, warm with filial love and 



198 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

beautiful with heavenly light, most of us have seen. Happy 
indeed are we, if in such homes our lives are spent ! 

I should hope to be delivered from so mean a passion 
as envy ; but one who has been for the greater part of his 
life a pilgrim and a stranger can hardly look without some 
strugglings between desire and regret upon those homes 
where the same household has dwelt beneath the same 
roof for scores of years ; where a whole generation has 
grown up from infancy to maturity, passing forth at length 
to other homes ; where still the aged parents dwell in peace, 
and whither, on this Thanksgiving day, the children with 
their several broods of grandchildren return, to fill the old 
house again with the light of love and the melodious mirth 
of prattling voices. What a treasure, to all time, such a 
home must be to every one to whom it has ever belonged ! 
With how many memories it is stocked ! How rich are its 
stores of sweet association ! Here is the mother's chamber 
— is there any sanctuary more sacred? Here she has knelt 
to pray — how often ! — for the children God had given her ; 
here, for many waking hours of darkness, she has pondered 
their bright sayings, and grieved over their misdeeds, and 
laid her loving plans for their well-being. Pause upon this 
threshold! Let the head be uncovered; let the lips be 
mute! It is the holiest place! Here is the old parlor — 
these matrons coming home to-day can remember when 
they, in their maidenhood, sat in this quaint old room, 
embellished then as now with many devices of their own 
hands, and listened with beating hearts to the unfolding of 
their life's romance ; can remember, too, the time when the 
bride, adorned for her husband, here pronounced those 
solemn words which fixed her earthly destiny. And there 



HOMES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. 199 

are sober recollections here, to-day ; memories of times 
when in waywardness or in rebellion these children laid 
heavy burdens upon the hearts of their parents. Doubtless 
the furrows in these cheeks are deeeper, and these decrepit 
bodies stoop and totter more, to-day, because of those 
offenses. It must be, too, that the grandparents themselves, 
looking upon the fathers and mothers, who, but a little 
while ago, were making the house merry with their childish 
laughter, can remember harsh and arbitrary commands of 
theirs, which galled the spirits of their children ; moments 
of fretful ness and impatience ; errors of judgment in their 
parental government, over which they grieved in days gone 
by. Such remembrances as these, while they are not joyous 
but grievous, nevertheless work in the soul the peaceable 
fruits of righteousness. With humbled and softened hearts 
they are recalled, and parents and children speak to each 
in kinder tones because of them. 

There are other memories ! While the circle is sitting 
round the fire on this glad Thanksgiving day, recounting 
the things that are behind, there comes a moment of 
silence. They are all thinking of those days gone by that 
were so dark ; when the noises of the children were hushed, 
and an unwonted stillness filled the house ; when the 
doctor, commonly so chatty and so cheerful, came often 
and went away looking very sober; when at length there 
was no more need of anxious watching, and the household 
bowed down by the bed-side, while the minister knelt and 
in tremulous tones lifted up the voice of prayer, that it 
might steal in when the gates of heaven opened to receive 
the soul departing, and bring back comfort and support to 
the stricken ones left behind ; when the neighbors came in 



200 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and took as much as they could bear of the burden of 
sorrow, tenderly closing the sightless eyes and folding the 
helpless hands ; when the last look was taken and the last 
benediction spoken at the grave — it all comes back, to-day, 
as vivid and real as though it were yesterday ! The scent 
of the white roses that were scattered then so thickty 
through these rooms has not yet quite departed. And yet 
this is not a ghastly memory. It hallows and endears the 
home. The family altar is never truly sanctified till the 
chrism of a great sorrow has been poured upon it. 

Consecrated by such sorrows, endeared by such joys, 
hallowed by the affection of which they are the shrine, 
fragrant with the incense of prayer and praise, all glorious 
within by reason of the immortal hopes that cluster round 
their altars, may the homes be in which you dwell, good 
neighbors, every one ! So shall the dearest spot on earth 
prove only as the porter's lodge standing by the entrance of 
the fair gardens of the Palace Beautiful ; and when at last 
the silver cord is loosed, and through the mists of life's last 
hour the light of a better morning breaks, they who stand 
by shall hear you saying, " This is none other but the house 
of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 

John xiv: 14. 
"If ye shall ask angthing in my name, I will do it." 

These words of our Lord, several times repeated in 
his last conversation with his disciples, constitute the 
charter of that great company of believers to whom prayer 
is a daily vocation and a practical power in life. Those 
who suppose that something is really effected by means 
of prayer — that it is a method of procuring benefits that 
would not otherwise come to us — refer to these specific 
promises of our Lord more frequently than to any other 
Scripture, as their reason and warrant for praying. Here, 
they say, is an assurance that lacks nothing of definiteness 
nor of comprehensiveness. "If ye shall ask anything 
in my name I will do it." If we believe that he who spoke 
these words always spoke the truth, and has all power 
in heaven and on earth, then we may ask what we will 
and it shall be done for us, providing we ask in his name. 
It becomes, then, a matter of great importance to know 
exactly what is meant by praying in Christ's name. 

In the common acceptation, the phrase "in my name " 
means the same thing as "for my sake" or "on my ac- 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

count." The common notion seems to be that if we present 
ourselves before the Infinite Majesty with any request and 
make use of this formula, "In Christ's name" or "For 
Christ's sake," our requests will be granted, no matter 
what they may be. I have often heard this , promise 
explained as an unlimited order upon the treasury and 
storehouse of heaven. 

The young soldier, dying on the field, sends by his 
wounded comrade a letter to his father at home, saying, 
" This is my friend ; give him whatever he asks for, for 
my sake ; " and although the requests of the wounded 
man are unreasonable ; although the things that he asks 
for are injurious to him, the father of the dead soldier 
grants the petitions of the living one, simply because of 
the love that he bears his son. Just so men go to the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with this text as their 
warrant : " He is my friend ; he has given me this promise ; 
therefore, because of thy love for Him, honor the promise 
and give me the thing that I ask for." The claim is made 
solely on the ground of the Father's love for his Son Jesus 
Christ. 

Another conception of the promise refers it to an 
infinite fund of merit which Christ has accumulated by 
his death, and upon which this promise authorizes all 
his disciples to draw. Christ, by his obedience and his 
sufferings, has put the Father under infinite obligations 
to him ; those, therefore, who come to the Father in the 
name of the Son, have a claim on him which he is bound 
to recognize. The transaction, as thus conceived, is partly 
legal and partly commercial. The Father gives good 
things to Christ's friends when they ask him, in view of a 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 203 

claim which Christ has upon him ; or the Father gives 
good things to Christ's friends when they ask him, out 
of the proceeds of a capitalized stock of merit which 
Christ has accumulated. To ask in Christ's name is 
therefore substantially the same thing as to present an 
order at a store signed by one of the joint proprietors, 
or a check upon a bank certified by the cashier. The 
name, as we say, is good for the amount. It matters 
not to us whether the persons to whom the check or the 
order is presented are friendly or unfriendly to us ; it 
matters not to them whether the thing that we receive 
is good for us or not ; there need be no acquaintance 
beyond simple identification, nor affection, nor confidence, 
nor even good will between us and them ; what they impart 
to us is not of grace to us but of debt to the one whose 
name we present to them. 

This view of the intercession of Christ needs only 
to be distinctly stated in order that its crudity may be 
perceived. To suppose that God answers our prayers, not 
because he loves us or desires our welfare, but because 
of his love to Christ ; or to suppose that he supplies our 
wants, not out of his own abounding mercy, but out of 
the stores of grace which Christ has accumulated by his 
atonement, is to hold a most inadequate view of the whole 
subject of prayer and of the relation of God to men. It 
may be difficult for us to explain the exact nature of 
Christ's mediation, but we can surely say this about it, 
negatively, that it does not teach and cannot mean that 
there is any difference between God's feeling toward us 
and Christ's feeling ; if we believe that Christ and the 
Father are one, we cannot believe that. Christ is a media- 



20 Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

tor between God and man in the sense that he is a revealer 
of God to man ; not in the sense that he is a negotiator 
or referee between two parties, both of whom have con- 
fidence in him and affection for him, but neither of whom 
has any affection for or confidence in the other. The idea 
that our prayers for blessings go no further than Christ 
by whom the requests must be endorsed before they will 
be attended to, and whose endorsement is all that entitles 
them to attention, and that the gifts of God on their way 
to men come no nearer to us than Christ, by whom they are 
distributed among men, is a view that degrades God, that 
dishonors Christ, and that contradicts the doctrine of the 
divine unity. 

What then is meant by asking in Christ's name for 
gifts from God? 

The name, in the New Testament, generally stands 
for the person. It is not a mere sign or appellation, it is 
the essential character or personality. Thus when Peter 
says of the lame man who was healed at the temple gate, 
" His name [Christ's name], through faith in his name, 
hath made this man strong," we know that he means not 
merely that the syllables which spell the words Jesus Christ, 
used as a charm or incantation, have wrought this cure; 
but that the divine power there present and acting has 
done it. So always when miracles are said to have been 
wrought by the name of Christ, it is the personality of 
Christ and the power of Christ that are referred to. 
Believing in the name of Christ is believing not merely 
in a word but in the person of Christ himself, with a 
glance, no doubt, at the character or reputation which 
he has gained, of one worthy to be trusted. 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 



205 



To ask for anything in the name of Christ is to ask, 
then, in the person or character of Christ ; to put ourselves 
in his place as nearly as we can, and to ask for the things 
that he would ask for and in the spirit with which he 
would present his requests. " When we desire another 
to ask anything from a superior in our name," says one, 
" we mean to ask as if we asked. It must be something 
then which we should ask for personally. Therefore Christ, 
desiring us to ask in his name, limits us to ask those 
things which we presume he would ask for us." 

" Name," says Olshausen, "used in application to God 
and to Christ as the manifestation of God, always denotes 
the divine entity itself in the whole compass of its prop- 
erties. Accordingly prayer in the name of Christ is such 
as is offered in the nature, mind and spirit of Christ." 
So Robinson, also : " The name of God, or of Christ, 
is used as a periphrase for God himself, or Christ himself, 
in all their being, attributes, relations, manifestations." 

To pray in the name of Christ is, then, to have the 
mind of Christ when we pray ; to be in the spirit of Christ ; 
to think the same thoughts that Christ is thinking; to 
be cherishing the same desires that he is cherishing ; to 
have the same purposes that he is following ; and when 
this is true of us, then whatever we ask for we shall surely 
receive. 

But is it possible, you are asking, for any of us thus 
to be completely identified in thought and feeling and 
purpose with Christ? Perhaps not; but Justin proportion 
as his mind is in us, and our lives reproduce his life, will 
our prayers be effectual. Just in proportion as we are one 
with him in thought and life are we able to pray in his 



206 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

name ; and anything that we thus ask will surely be done 
for us. 

The same truth is put in another form by our Lord 
when he says : " If ye abide in me, and my words [that is, 
my laws or principles] abide in you, ye shall ask what 
ye will and it shall be done unto you. It is the inter- 
blending of the Master's life with that of the disciple, 
the perfect unity of mind and heart, that is the condition 
of successful prayer. So again in the same chapter : " Ye 
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained 
you that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your 
fruit should remain ; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the 
Father in my name, he may give it you." It is only when 
the life of the Master quickens and invigorates the disciple, 
just as the life of the vine does that of the branches, that 
the disciple brings forth fruit that remains ; and it is only 
when he is in this condition, mastered by the spirit of 
Christ, inspired by his truth, governed by his will, that 
he can truly pray in Christ's name, and find a certain 
answer to his prayers. 

But some will say that this interpretation of the 
phrase greatly limits the promise. " If it means no more 
than this," it will be said, " it does not mean nearly so 
much as we always supposed it to mean." 

It must be admitted that this interpretation does limit 
the promise in certain directions. That is really no ob- 
jection to the interpretation. There is such a thing as 
making a phrase of Scripture mean so much that it means 
nothing at all. In our eagerness to extend the force and 
application of the words of Christ we sometimes overload 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 207 

them with all sorts of extravagances from which reason 
recoils dragging faith along with it. 

These words of our Lord have often been seized upon 
by ignorant and wilful disciples as warranting them in 
an attempt to coerce the bestowment of the divine bounty. 
If we ask for anything in his name, they say, he will do it 
for us. Asking in his name is simply asserting his media- 
tion, and claiming for ourselves the benefits of it. We 
do not claim this in our own right ; we have no rights 
in the premises : but we have become by our hearty and 
loyal choice the disciples of Jesus Christ, and he tells 
us that if we present any petition at the throne of grace, in 
his name, it shall be granted us." Reasoning in this way, 
men have brought to God many strange requests for objects 
unworthy and injurious to themselves, and yet have sup- 
posed that by the use of this phrase they made good their 
demand upon Him. Those to whom worldly prosperity 
would be a curse, who have no power to use wealth wisely, 
and would surely be corrupted by it, sometimes ask for 
it, and say that they are asking in Christ's name, and 
seem to think that God is not faithful to his promise 
because he does not give it to them. 

There are a thousand forms of temporal good for 
which men are wont to pray ; and their theory is that 
if they only desire these things, and confidently ask for 
them, and take care to say that they expect them only 
through the mediation of Christ, they will surely receive 
them. When they fail in obtaining these things that they 
want by this process, their faith is sorely tried, and they 
begin to doubt the word of God. 

A little reflection will show us how foolish it is to 



208 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

suppose that our Lord ever meant to commit to those who 
are as blind to their own true interest as we often are 
the power of summoning heaven to our undoing. If we, 
by simply fixing our mind in a certain way, or by using 
a certain phrase, could secure for ourselves anything that 
Omnipotence is able to give us, we should speedily destroy 
ourselves. We may be very sure that God will not inter- 
rupt or modify the order of nature to give us anything that 
is not good for us, no matter how urgently we may ask it, 
nor how passionately we may plead the all-prevailing 
Name. 

Sometimes good people have whims, not only foolish 
but hurtful and hateful ones, that they wish to have 
gratified. One good woman whom I knew prayed all night, 
as she said, that her husband might be kept from joining a 
certain church — a church in good fellowship with the one 
to which she belonged, but in another denomination. She 
was sure, she said, that her prayer would be answered, 
for she had prayed in Christ's name. Thus she imagined 
this promise to be a weapon put into her hand with which 
she could compel the Deity to gratify her small bigotry, her 
antipathy to another Christian sect. She used the name of 
Christ in her prayers no doubt ; but she was very far from 
having the mind and temper of Christ ; and it was therefore 
not in his name, in any deep and true sense, that she was 
praying. 

Such crude and sordid and selfish petitioning this 
interpretation of the promise does not encourage. Neither 
does it encourage that kind of speculative or experimental 
praying which was proposed a few years ago by an eminent 
scientific man, by which the power of prayer was to be 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 209 

tested. The proposition was that Christians all unite to 
pray for the patients in a certain ward of a hospital ; and 
if the patients in that ward recovered more rapidly than 
those in other wards the result would be a demonstration 
of the power of prayer. But Christians who pray in- 
quisitively or empirically, just to see whether there is any 
use in praying or not, are not praying with the mind 
of Christ, no matter what phrases they may use ; and there 
is no promise of answer to any such prayers. To ask a 
good man for a good gift, just to see what he would say, 
would be an insult ; and it is not less offensive to approach 
God in this way. 

Neither does this interpretation encourage the expecta- 
tion that God will work miracles to relieve us of work or of 
deserved suffering. Some Christians imagine that God will 
support them in idleness if they only pray in faith for food 
and raiment and shelter. We know, as well as we can 
know anything, that it is God's will that we should earn 
our livelihood by labor, and husband our earnings with 
prudence ; this is the discipline which he has appointed for 
man ; to suppose that he will interpose miraculously in 
answer to our prayer, to discharge us from the obligation 
that he has laid upon all men, is to show a very poor 
understanding of his laws and a very small respect for 
them. One who thinks that he can suggest to the Most 
High a better regimen than the regimen of industry which 
he has appointed for his children, or who thinks that he 
ought to be made an exception to the general rule, cannot 
be said to show much of the temper of Christ in his 
prayers. 

The same principle applies to suffering. One who 



210 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

violates a physical law the existence of which he knows or 
ought to know, and then thinks to escape through prayer 
from the penalty of that law, really insults God by his 
prayer. No one can pray in the name of Christ, in the 
sense in which the phrase is here used, who is not careful 
to observe and obey every part of the law of God, that 
which is written in Nature as well as that which is written 
in the Bible. 

These, then, are some of the limitations which we must 
give to this promise. When the Master says to us, " If ye 
shall ask anything in my name I will do it," he does not 
mean that he will give us things that are not good for us, 
nor that he will gratify all our unreasonable and selfish 
whims, nor that he will satisfy our speculative curiosity, 
nor that he will work miracles to deliver us from the need 
of labor, nor that he will set aside for us the penalties of 
violated natural law, simply because we ask him to do so 
and append his name to our petitions. 

The very first condition of asking in Christ's name is 
an entire and hearty willingness to know and to do the will 
of the Lord. He who truly prays in Christ's name wants 
nothing so much as to be conformed in every thought and 
every desire to the Heavenly Father's will. All his prayers, 
in fact, can be reduced to this one prayer, " Thy will be 
done ! " Through all his petitioning this desire runs ; it is 
the tonic of every melody that breaks from his lips when 
he speaks to God in the holy place ; to this one central 
wish of his life every phrase turns and every thought is 
moulded. 

To pray in the name or character of Christ is to 
remember that we are ignorant and that God is infinitely 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 211 

wise ; and that what he chooses for us, though it may seem 
evil to us, is far better than anything that we could choose 
for ourselves ; that therefore it would be the height of 
unwisdom for us to dictate to him what he shall do for us ; 
that we can only make known to him our desires, and then 
leave ourselves with entire submission in his careful and 
powerful hands. 

u I came not to do my own will but the will of him that 
sent me," is the uniform expression of Christ's deepest 
thought ; when that purpose takes possession of your life 
and subdues to itself every thought and every desire, then 
your prayers in his name can not fail of being answered. 
You do not pray as he prayed until you pray in this tone. 

I am aware that these limitations will seem to some 
persons to rob prayer of much of its efficacy. The notion 
that prayer is a device for making our wills prevail over 
God's will, — for constraining God to let us have our way, is 
a very common notion. But it cannot too soon be aban- 
doned. The very elements of prayer are humility and not 
self-assertion, submission and not self-will, trust and not 
dictation. 

And after we have qualified this promise in all these 
ways it is still large enough — so large that we shall never 
begin to realize all the good it offers us. 

It does not forbid us to ask for temporal mercies, for 
the least of the good things that God provides, nor for the 
greatest of them. You may pray for health ; that is a 
blessing that Christ gave to many while he was here ; per- 
adventure he will give it now to you ; it is one of the things 
that you may fairly presume that he would ask for you. 
But it is a gift that he does not always give to those he 



212 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

loves best ; and when you pray for it you must always say, 
" Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." 

You may pray for success in business and for prosper- 
ity if you desire financial success and temporal prosperity 
for spiritual or benevolent rather than for natural and 
selfish reasons. You would better be careful just here, 
however; for this is one of the places at which the 
deceitfulness of the human heart is apt to assert itself. 
Many a man has said to himself: " how I wish I could 
be rich! How I should like to have all the money I 
want to do good with ! " — when after all the benevolent 
thought was only the mask of a selfish one. The person to 
whom he wanted to do the most good was himself. No 
doubt he did imagine some gratification in using his wealth 
charitably, but the deepest and strongest longing was for 
the gratification of his cravings for pleasure or for power. 
Men do, however, sometimes desire wealth and material 
success for higher reasons — that they may have the means 
of self-improvement, and the means of usefulness ; we 
know that they desire it for these purposes, because when 
they get it they use it chiefly for these purposes ; and 
any one who is entirely honest in cherishing such a desire, 
may ask for wealth and material success, because he can 
fairly presume that Christ himself would ask for the same 
thing for him. But here, too, the dominating wish will be 
that God's will may be done. You may honestly think 
that you could use wealth in such a way as to derive moral 
and spiritual benefit from it for yourself, and to confer 
benefits upon others ; but the Omniscient One may know 
that you are mistaken about this, and, for your own good, 
as well as for his glory, he may therefore withold what you 



PRAYING IN CHRIST'S NAME. 213 

crave. And therefore it is necessary that you should 
always frame all your petitions for such gifts in such a 
manner as to condition them upon his wise and loving 
choice for you. And so of every kind of earthly or 
temporal good. You may ask for anything that seems to 
you to consist with your own moral and spiritual well 
being ; for the bestowment of any gift, for aid in any under- 
taking, that seems to you right or wise. But inasmuch as 
your judgment may be at fault in deciding what is right or 
wise, the ruling petition of every such prayer must always 
be, " Thy will be done." 

There is one class of petitions, however, in which you 
do not need to make any of these reservations. When you 
ask for spiritual gifts, then if you are sincere you know 
that you are asking in Christ's name. You do not pre- 
sume, you know that you are speaking his mind, when you 
pray for deliverance from the evil, for power to do the right. 
If he were praying for you, you know that this is exactly 
what he would pray for. He might ask for any of these 
other things that we have been speaking of; he would 
surely ask for this. What his purposes are concerning our 
earthly conditions, whether they shall be prosperous or 
adverse, he has not thought best to tell us; he' wants us to 
trust him for all these things ; but we do know of a surety 
what his purposes are concerning our characters ; we know 
that he wants them to be sound and pure and holy. " This 
is the will of God, even your sanctiflcation." He who 
prays, " Create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a 
right spirit within me ; wash me thoroughly from mine 
iniquity and cleanse me from my sin," knows that the 
thing he is asking for is in accordance with Christ's will, 



21Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

and knows that if he is enough in earnest to set his own 
will to working out the salvation that he asks for he will 
not ask in vain. 

And now do you say that I have narrowed this promise 
by my interpretation? How much have I made it include? 
I have made it embrace all forms of spiritual good — every- 
thing that improves the character, that benefits directly 
or indirectly the soul of man. Whatever this word 
" anything " in the text may not mean, it does offer to us 
and certify to us all that is involved in hungering and 
thirsting for righteousness. All that comes within the 
sweep of that beatitude is assured to us by this word of 
Christ. Therefore I do not confess that I have stripped the 
promise of its preciousness. All that is really worth 
having is included in it now. It does not assure us that 
by the use of a certain phrase we can constrain God to let 
us have our own way about everything, for his way is better 
for us than our own, and he loves us too well always to let 
us have our own way. But it does assure us that if we 
seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, these 
shall be ours, and that all needful things shall be added. 
Is not that enough ? 



EXAMPLE AND LIEE. 



I John v: II, 12. 

"And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this 
life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that 
hath not the Son of God hath not the life.'" 

In revolting from the hard legal and commercial 
statements of the work of Christ which grew out of 
mediaeval philosophy and mediaeval law, many Christians 
have gone to the opposite extreme, and have attributed, 
to him a part in the salvation of men that is almost 
trivial. This is a common fact of human experience ; 
overstatements are followed by understatements ; when 
it is discovered that a truth has been distorted or ex- 
aggerated, it is apt to be cast aside altogether. When men 
found that their ideas of justice would not suffer them 
to say that Christ was punished for our sins, or that his 
sufferings were judicially inflicted upon him by the Father, 
for the expiation of our guilt, then they began to make 
statements about his work that were utterly and painfully 
inadequate. Those who rejected the view of penal sub- 
stitution, were commonly content with saying that Christ 
in his life and death was simply an example to us — an 



216 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

example of self-sacrifice ; and that we are saved by follow- 
ing his example. It is quite commonly supposed by many 
persons that this view is the only alternative of the penal 
or commercial view. And you will often hear it said of 
one who rejects the doctrine of a judicial infliction of 
sufferings upon the Son by the Father, that he thinks that 
all Christ did for us was to furnish us a good example. 
The fact that there is any middle term in Christology 
between Expiation and Example is a fact that many good 
people have failed to comprehend. I wish to set forth 
at this time a truth concerning the relation of the work 
of Christ to our salvation which seems to me to be deeper 
and more vital than any of these extreme statements. 

It cannot be denied that the New Testament constantly 
represents the death of Christ as having the effect to 
reconcile men to God. Between God and men there was 
alienation and enmity ; Christ is the mediator between God 
and men who has brought them together and made peace 
between them. The work of reconciliation is represented 
as being wrought by the death of Christ. I do not care to 
philosophize about this ; I have no theories about it that I 
care to promulgate ; I am content to accept the fact, only 
protesting against any theory which seems to impugn the 
justice of God. 

But this work of reconciliation, as the Scriptures rep- 
resent it, is only the beginning of the work of salvation. 
Christ reconciles us first and then saves us. " For if," says 
the Apostle, "when. we were enemies, we were reconciled to 
God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, 
we shall be saved by his life." This may be regarded 
as the classical passage of Paul's writings on this subject. 



EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 



217 



No other single text of his tells us so fully and so explicitly 
what the Redeemer does for us. He reconciles us by his 
death, he saves us by his life. Of the work of reconcilia- 
tion I will not speak to-day ; I am concerned with the 
larger work of salvation which follows reconciliation. 
How is it that Christ saves us by his life? "By setting 
before us a perfect example," some men say. I wish 
to show that this answer is altogether superficial and 
inadequate. 

It will be admitted, of course, that Christ has given us 
a perfect example. He has not only told us what to do, he 
has shown us how to live. He was himself, by the method 
which he followed, the great Object Teacher, and his life 
was the great Object Lesson. He not only taught us the 
truth, and showed us the way, but he was the Truth and 
the Way. The example that he gave us is not, indeed, 
sufficient to fit in detail all the experiences of our lives. 
A thousand things which we must do he never did ; the 
outward circumstances of our lives are very different from 
those of his life ; and any attempt slavishly to follow his 
example in matters of detail — to do the identical things 
that he did, and not to do anything that he is not reported 
as doing, would be absurd. His conduct was, however, 
governed by certain principles, and it is possible for us to 
detach those principles from the specific acts in which they 
found expression, and to govern ourselves by them. When 
we do this, we rightly follow his example. 

But while we have in the life of Christ an objective 
representation of perfect conduct which serves a very 
important purpose in our moral education, and while it is 
useful and even necessary for us to study the model con- 



218 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

tinually, and to fashion our lives after it, yet this example 
would prove powerless for the renewal and reformation 
of our characters. 

Example is more powerful than precept ; its influence 
goes deeper and takes hold of us with a stronger grasp ; 
but after all it is of the same nature as precept. You can 
give a child in words some idea of the rules of polite 
behavior; you can give him an example of politeness 
which will be much more instructive and effective in form- 
ing his manners than any verbal rules that you could give 
him ; but the rules and the example would both operate in 
the same way ; they would reach and influence him through 
his intellect and his will. He would learn your rules, and 
would try to obey them ; he would observe your actions, 
and would try to copy them. In both cases the effect 
produced would be the result of a voluntary effort. It 
is easier for him to imitate your actions than it is to 
remember and obey your rules ; the object teaching of 
etiquette is more vivid and effective than abstract teaching ; 
but both address the will through the intelligence. 

Now while the imitation of an action is easier and 
pleasanter than the obedience of a precept, there is still 
a great lack of beauty and of vigor in the conduct that is 
simply the result of imitation. We do not, ordinarily, 
admire imitations. Articles of food or of dress or of 
ornament that are mere imitations we do not affect. And 
this is not only because the imitation is less valuable, 
intrinsically, than the object imitated, but also because the 
beauty of the original fails to appear in the imitation. 
The best copy you can get of a great painting will be 
far behind the original. No matter how skilful the hand 



EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 



219 



may be that executes the copy, it will fail to catch and 
reproduce the spirit and vigor of the first painting. The 
artist who is copying may be equal in manual skill to the 
one whose work he is trying to copy ; but when he sits 
down and simply tries to reproduce the other man's lines 
and tints, to express the other man's thoughts, there is a 
certain stiffness and hardness about his work which you 
would not see in it if it were original work — if he were 
expressing his own thoughts in his own way. 

Here is a penman of great skill ; his hand is finely 
trained, and his chirography, when he writes with a free 
hand, is beautiful ; but give him a specimen of another 
man's writing, and tell him to imitate it as closely as he 
can, and, though the other man's writing may be much 
more beautiful than his, yet when he tries to imitate it, his 
work will probably be cramped and unsymmetrical — much 
less fair to see than his hajid-writing. 

In every department of art this rule will be found to 
hold, that original work is much more spirited and 
vigorous and characteristic than mere imitation ; that it 
is when a man is thinking his own thought and express- 
ing himself in his own way that he is doing the best 
work. 

And what is true of art is not less true of conduct. 
Behavior that is the result of simple imitation is never 
admirable, and is often ridiculous. Conduct has its artistic 
side as well as its moral side, and the rule that applies in 
other departments of art applies to the forms of behavior. 
You sometimes see a person whose manners are evidently 
the result of study and imitation ; he does nothing sponta- 
neously ; every movement is copied from some model of 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

deportment, whose manners he has admired. Such 
manners are commonly ludicrous in the extreme. 

You sometimes see speakers whose style of oratory^is 
largely the product of imitation. They have chosen either 
some teacher of elocution, or some favorite popular orator 
as their model, and they give you a copy, as t nearly exact as 
they can produce, of his gestures [and his tones and his 
cadences. Such an imitation is never pleasing, and is often 
disgusting ; it is always lacking in force and effectiveness ; 
the mere imitator has little power to convince or persuade. 

What is true of the external graces of the person is 
still more true of the deeper traits of character and the 
weightier matters of conduct. Virtue that is a simple 
imitation is lacking in beauty and in power. It is infinitely 
better, of course, that we should imitate good conduct than 
that we should imitate evil conduct ; the mere copyist in 
morals is a far less disgusting person than the copyist 
of vice and vulgarity ; but good conduct in one man that is 
merely a servile imitation of good conduct in another man 
lacks in the repetition all the spirit and grace and excellent 
flavor that it has in the original. There is a perceptible 
hardness and stiffness and unreality about it ; it is an 
artificial flavor after all. 

So, then, if a perfect example were put before us, and 
we should set ourselves resolutely and carefully to the 
copying of that example, we should be sure to fail; our 
lives, though they might seem outwardly very like the life 
we were trying to imitate, would resemble it only as the 
artificial flower resembles the real one. "That peculiar 
character," says Dr. Mozley, " which we admire in another, 
would become quite a different one in ourselves could we 



EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 221 

achieve the most successful imitation. The copy would 
never have the spirit of the original, because it would want 
the natural root upon which the original grew. We ought 
to grow out of 'our own roots; our own inherent propriety 
of constitution is the best nucleus for our own formation." 

When we give ourselves simply to the servile copying 
of another character, not only do we fail to reproduce that 
character, we fail to produce the best character that we are 
capable of. The best character that we can produce, as Dr. 
Mozley says, is that which grows out of our own roots. It 
is when we are our own genuine selves, not when we are 
imitating somebody else, that we are reaching the mark 
of the prize of our high calling. The rose may be more 
beautiful than the violet, but the violet attains its own 
perfection not by trying to be a rose, but by developing its 
own life to the highest possible degree, — by growing out of 
its own roots and fulfilling the laws of its own being. 

When God gave you being he gave you character and 
personality of your own. What he meant you to be is 
indicated in the very constitution of your soul. And 
although by disobedience and alienation from him you 
may have badly injured your own character, though the 
divine perfection in which it ought to shine may but dimly 
appear in it, yet the ground plan, so to speak, is there, and 
that is the plan on which your character is to be built ; the 
thing for you to do is simply to become what God meant 
you to be, and this you cannot do by trying to imitate the 
character and conduct of some one else. The prodigal 
when he was in a far country " came to himself." That is 
what you need to do. You want to be brought back to 
your true and real self, not to become like unto somebody. 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

else. An- effort to imitate any other character or life, 
then — even that of the Highest — would not produce in 
you the result that you were made and meant to bring 
forth. 

One of the results which is sure to accompany the 
effort to live by example, is the aggravation of self-con- 
sciousness. The steady and laborious attempt to imitate 
the conduct of another necessarily keeps our attention fixed 
all the while upon ourselves, our own appearances and 
performances. The comparison of our actions with those 
of the person whose example we are following must be 
constantly made ; we must all the while be thinking of 
how we are behaving. Now it is certain that the virtue 
which is all the while conscious of itself is not the highest 
kind of virtue. The elements of spontaneity, of freedom, 
of self-forgetfulness are among the cardinal elements of the 
highest conduct. A life that is the result merely or mainly 
of imitation cannot possess these elements in any high 
degree. 

I think I have shown that the theory of Christ's work 
which represents him simply as living and dying to set 
before us a perfect example of purity and truth and self- 
denying love is a very inadequate theory. At any rate it is 
plain that merely to place before men a perfect example is 
not to do them the greatest good ; that they need to have 
something more than this done for them. For even when 
they set themselves conscientiously to imitate this example, 
the result in them is a formal and artificial virtue, a type of 
character far less beautiful than they are capable of, one of 
the traits of which is likely to be a morbid and disagreeable 
self-consciousness. The life whose formative method is 



EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 

imitation is not the best type of life, even though the model 
imitated be the very highest model. If, then, Jesus Christ 
had come to earth and had lived as he lived and died as he 
died, and had merely said to men : " Imitate me ; take my 
life for your example, and follow it as closely as you can," — 
if that had been all that he had done, his work on behalf 
of humanity would have been altogether defective in char- 
acter and in result. And those who find in him only an 
example to imitate receive but little of the benefit ihat he 
came to bring. 

What men most need is the healing, the quickening, 
the replenishing of their spiritual life. It is not a model to 
live by, it is '' new life and fuller that we want." And this 
is the want that Christ supplies. " I am come," he says, 
"that they might have life and that they might have it 
more abundantly." And the beloved disciple bears the 
same testimony, in the words of the text : u This is the 
record, that God hath given to us eternal life and this life is 
in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life and he that 
hath not the Son of God hath not life." Still more closely 
and strongly our Lord himself declares the purpose of his 
coming, in his last prayer for his disciples : " Father, the 
hour is come ; glorify thy Son that thy Son also may 
glorify thee : as thou hast given him power over all flesh 
that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast 
given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know 
thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast 
sent." I know not where we should look for a more 
explicit or more authoritative declaration of the object for 
which our Savior came to earth than we find in these words 
that I have read. And it is plain that the work which he 



22Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

has undertaken to do is something more than to set us a 
good example, something much more radical and vital ; 
something that takes hold of us in a different way and 
works in us by a different set of forces. 

The work that he does is the impartation to us of life. 
He that hath the Son hath life. The life that he imparts to 
us is spiritual life. And spiritual life consists in the love of 
the right and the true and the good, and in power to do the 
right, to apprehend the truth, to find and follow the good. 
This love of righteousness and moral goodness as the best 
possessions, this power to lay hold upon them and make 
them our own and realize them in thought and word and 
deed — this is spiritual life. In the first chapter of this 
Gospel the same truth is set before us under a different 
phrase : " But as many as received him, to them gave he 
power to become the sons of God." The sons of God are 
they whose life is in the highest sense spiritual. It is in 
imparting to them this spiritual life, this love of righteous- 
ness and this power to do right, that Christ enables us to 
become the sons of God. 

How is it that he imparts to men this life ? Ah, I do 
not know that. How does the sun impart life to the seeds 
and roots and bulbs that during all this long winter have 
been waiting for him under ground ? I do not know how 
he does it, but I know that he does it. Some of them have 
heard his voice already arid have come forth from their 
graves ; many others will hear it soon, and, drest in new 
garments bright and clean, these long imprisoned tribes of 
earth will spring rejoicing into life and beauty. The subtle 
might of his regenerating rays is seeking them out 
already; they begin to feel in every fibre the influence of 






EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 

his power ; life is quickened within them by his genial 
influence. 

And as many as receive Jesus Christ, as many as will 
accept Him as the Lord of their life, and will let him in- 
struct them and lead them and inspire them, sweetly yield- 
ing to the influences of his grace, will find that he is doing 
for them something like what the sun does for the germs 
beneath the soil ; that he is imparting spiritual life to 
them ; that he is kindling in their souls the love of all 
things right and true and good, and increasing in them the 
power to realize such things in their lives. This is what he 
does for all who will receive him. The flower bulbs under 
the ground have no choice about receiving the awakening 
influences of the April sun. But that is where flowers and 
men are unlike. Men have the power to shut their hearts 
and lives against the regenerating light of the sun of right- 
eousness. But as many as will welcome this light and 
walk in it will find it quickening all the sentiments and 
forces of virtue in them ; cleansing away their foulness, 
overcoming their selfishness, filling them with a love of all 
things that are true and honest and of good report. 

He that hath the Son hath life. The divine life is 
imparted to him, he becomes by his union with Christ a 
partaker of the divine nature, and thus the very sources of 
thought and desire and imagination and choice in him are 
purified. The influence of this life-giving grace goes down 
to the very roots of your being ; it is a radical change ; it is 
what men call regeneration. Yet it is still, in Dr. Mozley's 
phrase, out of your own roots that you are growing ; your 
personality is not suppressed, it is strengthened, it is invig- 
orated ; you are not trying to be somebody else ; you are 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 



more really yourself than you ever were before ; from the 
aberrations of your vanity and folly you have come to 
yourself again. 

Such is the work that Christ does for every one that 
receives him. And it is a great deal more than furnishing 
us an example. It meets our deepest want, which is not 
so much a model as a regenerating power. The tulip bulb 
does not need a fullgrown tulip to look at, that it may 
know how to blossom ; it needs to feel at its own heart the 
warmth of the life-giving sun. Not Christ before you, as 
an example, but Christ in you, communicating to you the 
vitalizing* energy of his own eternal life, is the power of 
God unto salvation. If you will take Him for your Lord 
and Savior, will commune with him daily in secret places, 
will try as earnestly as Paul did to know him, to become 
fully acquainted with him, to identify yourself with him in 
feeling and interest, I know that just this result will follow; 
you may hardly be conscious of it, but this change will 
surely be wrought in you ; you will pass from death unto 
life, — from animalism and deceitfulness and selfishness to 
purity and truth and love. That will be salvation, and 
nothing that stops short of that is salvation. 

But the text says that this life is eternal life. The 
witness is that God has given to us eternal life and the life 
is in his Son. Yea, verily ! Such life as this is eternal life. 
The life of virtue is not subject to decay. The soul whose 
ruling loves and motives are such as I have been talking 
about has in itself the instinct and the assurance of immor- 
tality. Over such death has no power. Spiritual life is 
eternal life. The life whose organizing principles are right- 
eousness and truth and love, is a life that takes hold of the 



EXAMPLE AND LIFE. 227 

aeons to come with a sure grasp. God has so made the 
universe that these principles are indestructible ; in the 
nature of things virtue is immortal ; the life that is incor- 
porate with it has the promise of an everlasting day. 

" But he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." No 
doubt there are many who have not known the Son of God 
under his historic name of Jesus Christ, who yet have this 
life in them of which we have been speaking. " In every 
nation," says Peter, " he that feareth God and worketh 
righteousness is accepted of him." Some men have the 
Son, who know him not by his name. Those principles 
and attributes of God which were revealed to us in Jesus 
Christ they have learned to love and obey. In receiving 
thus the revelation that they have had of the divine nature, 
and in walking in the light of it they have entered into life. 
And it may be that to some even in Christian lands Jesus 
Christ has been so misrepresented — that the truth about 
him has been so travestied and caricatured — that they 
have been unable to receive him, under the name that he 
bears, and yet have received the essential truth that he 
came to teach and the real spiritual life that he came to 
communicate. 

But I fear that there are some who" have not the Son in 
any true meaning of that phrase. To them he has not been 
misrepresented, but faithfully and lovingly presented : they 
have his gospel in their hands, and they are not misled by 
any harsh travesty of it. Yet they do not want Jesus 
Christ to be their friend and Savior. It is just because the 
life that he inspires is pure and upright and unselfish that 
they do not wish to have anything to do with Him. They 
want to do some things that are not pure and upright and 



22,8 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

unselfish. And when any one who fairly knows Jesus 
Christ — who he is and what he is — who knows him to be 
perfectly wise and unspeakably good — yet turns away from 
him because he is good, and because he does not want such 
a good Master as he is, then we must say of such an one 
not only that he has not life, but that so long as he contin- 
ues to turn away from Jesus Christ he will not have life. 
No true spiriual life can be the portion of one who is in this 
'sad condition ; and since spiritual life and eternal life are 
one, he can not know what it is to have eternal life. How 
much it means to be without eternal life I cannot tell, and 
God forbid that any of you should ever know ! 



THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

Acts ii: 2*4. 

" Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pangs of death, 
because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." 

It was not possible that Death should hold our divine 
Lord and Savior. Over him the Conqueror of Nations 
had no power. Him the iron bars of the sepulcher could 
not confine. But what is the reason of this glorious 
impossibility? Why could not Death prevail against our 
Lord? 

Was it simply because of his power? Is the victory 
that he gained when he came forth from the grave only 
the prevalence of a stronger force over a weaker? Have 
we here nothing more than the repetition of that matching 
of might against might which had furnished to men of 
all ages and all grades of culture so large a part of their 
diversion? The love of power, the delight in wielding 
it and in witnessing its exercise, the joy of battle, the 
elation of victory, the excitement of the spectator who 
hangs over the arena, as well as of the gladiator who 
fights upon its crimson sands — how much of human 
energy finds vent in these great passions ! Is this spectacle 



230 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

of the triumphing of Christ over Death only another 
exhibition of strength? 

Doubtless we must see in the resurrection a proof of 
superhuman energy. " No man taketh my life from me ;" 
said our Lord; "I have power to lay it down, and I have 
power to take it again." What he meant by the power 
to lay down his life probably none of his disciples fulty 
knew ; what he meant by the power to take it again they 
did dimly understand, when they saw his empty tomb 
on the Easter morning, and heard him on the Easter 
evening saying unto them, " Peace be unto you ! " Here 
is the sign^of a Strength superior to Nature ; of an Energy 
that is not confined by the uniformities of physical law ; 
of a Force that is stronger than the strongest of the forces 
with which our science deals ; of a Power that is mightier 
than Death ! 

But is this all? Is this the most significant of the 
lessons that the resurrection teaches us? Is it chiefly 
an exhibition of power? No : this is the least and not 
the greatest of the truths disclosed to us upon the Easter 
day. Men had faith enough in physical power before 
Christ rose from the dead. They were quick enough to see 
and to applaud any revelation of force. Worshippers of 
power most of them were. The triumphs of men, of 
armies, of nations over one another, awakened all their 
enthusiasm ; they were ready to respond to every demon- 
stration of marvel-working might. Men believed quite 
enough in the power of God ; as a revelation of the fact 
that there is a Will behind nature superior to nature, the 
resurrection was not needed. 

What, then, was this impossibility? Was it logical. 



THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 231 

if it was not physical? Does the Apostle mean that Christ 
could not have been left in the grave, because, as one says, 
" the divine plan and purpose made his resurrection neces- 
sary?" Doubtless this is true. The success of his mission 
required him to rise from the grave. It was necessary as a 
practical measure, for the confirmation of his claims, and 
the verification of his gospel. But is this all? No: I do 
not think we have begun to state the measure of the 
Apostle's words, "it was not possible," when we have said 
that it was both physically and logically impossible for 
Christ to be holden of death. The impossibility was moral 
more than physical or logical. It was not might nor power 
nor policy but love and right that conquered when the 
angel rolled away the stone, and the Prince of Life came 
forth from the tomb. It was not that Jesus was too strong 
to be overcome by death, nor that his plans for the redemp- 
tion of the race were too well laid to suffer defeat at the 
hands of this enemy ; it was simply that a life as good and 
pure and loving as his life was could not be extinguished 
by death. That it ought not to be was plain before. It 
was now seen that it could not be. This is the deepest 
meaning of the resurrection. 

The apostle expresses in this phrase one of the 
strongest and most persistent of the instinctive moral 
feelings of man. This is the feeling that virtuous being 
ought to continue. It is sometimes said that man has an 
instinctive faith in immortality, and it is doubtless true 
that men do naturally look forward to existence beyond the 
grave. They hope for it, though there may be no clear 
evidence of it. But the feeling to which I refer is much 
deeper and more dominant than this. The question 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

whether all human lives will be continued beyond the 
grave is very different from the question whether virtuous 
human lives will be continued. To the first question 
reason might answer : " They may be ; let us trust that 
they are." To the second it replies with the emphasis of a 
mighty conviction, " They ought to be ! " 

I am not speaking now of the testimony of revelation 
concerning future existence ; I am speaking of the conclu- 
sions to which our own instinct and judgment would lead 
us. And I think that if we had to depend wholly on 
these for our light upon this great question, while each one 
might hope for life beyond the grave as his own inherit- 
ance, we should hesitate to affirm it confidently respecting 
all our neighbors. 

Here, for example, is one whose life has steadily gravi- 
tated downward ; who has grown more sordid, more sour, 
more brutish, more malignant with every passing year. 
There maybe good elements left in the man ; probably there 
is somebody who loves him yet, and who finds good in him ; 
but to most of those who have dealings with him he seems 
almost wholly bad, and ripening in badness. If he ever 
does any good it does not appear ; what power he has seems 
to be used to irritate, to corrupt, to despoil and to destroy 
his fellow men. So he lives, and so living he goes down to 
death. If we had no other guide than our own reason, and 
our own moral instincts, should we confidently affirm of 
such a man that there would be life for him beyond the 
grave? I do not think so. I think we should be more 
likely to say of him, pityingly and mournfully : " If there 
were any prospect that his character could be mended, if 
there were any assurance that regenerating influences could 



THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

be brought to bear upon his life in some other world, 
then we would hope that he might have life beyond ; but 
if his life is to go on in this strain, if he is to be a corrupter 
and a spoiler and a malefactor, there is no reason why his 
existence should be prolonged. If this universe is built on 
righteousness, the continuance of such lives is illogical and 
inexplicable." That is what the moral reason would say 
about it. 

But here is another of different quality. His life has 
been full of faithful and loving service of his kind ; he has 
been a helper, a comforter, a peace-maker among men ; his 
benignant presence always brought sunshine into every 
circle where he stood ; the contact of his spirit made every 
man more manly and every woman more womanly. Stead- 
ily as the years have gone by his character has been 
ripening, his insight has grown clearer, his purpose firmer, 
his wisdom serener, his beneficence larger, and now in the 
midst of his years he suddenly falls, and among men no 
more is seen. Is not our feeling about such a man's depar- 
ture quite different from that with which we noted the 
passing out of life of the other? Do we not say at once, 
that if this universe means righteousness such a man ought 
not to cease to be ; that the discontinuance of such a life 
would be as illogical and inexplicable as the continuance 
of the other would be? Whatever might be the conclusions 
of our metaphysics respecting the probability of future 
existence in the abstract, our moral sense most strenuously 
asserts that such life as this ought not to terminate. Death 
has seized upon our friend, we say, but it is not possible 
that death should hold him fast. 

In cases of many that we have known we have felt that 



2$ '4 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

this impossibility was stroDg, almost invincible ; but how 
much stronger should it have been in the minds of those 
who had been the companions and disciples of Jesus 
Christ all their lives ! Might they not have said, with far 
clearer emphasis, when the hand of death was laid on Him, 
" It is not possible that he should be holden of it? " 

Recall, if you can, some faint outline of the life of 
Jesus of Nazareth. Remember the clear truthfulness of 
his speech, cleansing away all mists of error and perversity, 
as the north wind sweeps away the fog — penetrating to the 
heart of all moral questions, and revealing to men the 
secrets of their own hearts ; remember the courage, that 
confronted and denounced the religious leaders of his time, 
for their hypocrisy and greed ; remember his friendship for 
the outcasts and the despised, his readiness to identify him- 
self with the poor, as well as to sit at meat with the rich ; 
the grand independence with which he brushed aside the 
conventional estimates — the contempt of the rich for the 
poor, the envy of the poor for the rich — and dealt with 
men as men ; remember the tireless beneficence and the 
boundless sympathy of his life — how he went about doing 
good, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, comforting the 
sorrowful. The story is trite and hackneyed, we have told 
it over so often, but try to make it real to yourselves, if but 
in some faint degree ; try to imagine what a subtle and 
sacred and mighty effluence of virtue went out from him 
continually ; what a center and source of righteousness and 
truth and love he was wherever he stood among men ! 
And now suddenly this life terminates. By wicked hands 
this Prince of Life is crucified and slain ! Is it possible 
that such a life, so pure and perfect and benignant, should 



THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 235 

end like this? Eliminate all the miraculous ; think only of 
the moral elements that entered into this character ; and 
does it not seem wholly incredible that this should be the 
end of it? 

" But the disciples," it may be said, " did think that 
Jesus had ceased to be." No, I do not believe that they 
did. They were dull and slow of heart ; they did not 
understand what he had told them concerning his 
reappearance on this earth ; but there is no evidence of any 
doubt in their minds that his life was going on, beyond the 
vail. Even this faith needed confirmation, of course, and 
this they were to have ; but their grief was not because 
they feared that he had ceased to be, but only because he 
had passed away from them without restoring the Kingdom 
to Israel. It was partly a personal bereavement, and partly 
a patriotic sorrow. 

It is hard to put ourselves into the places of these 
disciples, mentally ; to look at religious questions with their 
eyes ; to surround ourselves with the haze that then 
enfolded them. But go back with your knowledge of 
spiritual truths and moral laws, with your convictions that 
this is a righteous universe, over which a righteous God is 
ruling, and look at that life of Jesus of Nazareth and then 
say whether it is possible that death should be the end of 
it? You could not affirm that it would reappear on this 
earth ; on that point experience could give you no encour- 
agement ; but you could say that there ought to be and 
must be given to that life, somewhere, glory and 
immortality. 

The force of this conclusion respecting all highest and 
noblest life it is hard to evade. The expectation of future 



236 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

existence in the abstract may be more or less shadowy ; but 
the expectation that virtuous life will continue rests on the 
very foundation of our moral nature. And there is a great 
word of science that reaffirms this verdict of our moral 
sense. It is the fittest that survive, we are told. And, in a 
moral universe, it is the righteous, surely, who are fit to 
survive. 

So when we see any life gathering moral force and 
moral beauty through all its years on earth, accumulating a 
great fund of ripe wisdom, harvesting the fruits of 
discipline in a sanctified character, we cannot conceive it to 
be true that death ends all. That would be a moral 
absurdity. How is it possible that the power of goodness, 
of purity, of love, contained in this character should stop 
short at the grave, vanishing there into nothingness. 

You stand upon some elevated spot, where you can 
see, far down the valley, a railway^ train approaching. The 
pennant of smoke is lifted by the wind as the train 
draws nearer and nearer, bending round the curves, 
speeding swiftly along the straight alignments, its first 
faint murmur deepening into an audible roar, until it 
rushes past you swift, majestic, resistless, the very incarna- 
tion of motion and of might. Quickly, almost ^before 
your nerves have ceased to thrill with the onset of its 
power, it is out of sight behind an embankment, and out 
of hearing beyond a hill ; in a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye, it is gone. Would it be easy for you now to believe 
that that wonderful power has vanished out of being ; that 
when it passed beyond your sight it suddenly ceased to be ; 
that all which you saw and felt but a moment ago is now 
nothing but a memory? No; that would not be possible. 



THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 237 

You are sure that the glory of going on still belongs to that 
wonderful mechanism, though it is now beyond your sight. 
And it seems b to me that the reasons for believing in the 
persistence of a great moral force after it has disappeared 
from these scenes of earth are far stronger. Of such a 
power we say, more confidently than of any physical 
energy, " It cannot be blotted out ; it must continue 
to be." 

This is the deepest and most fundamental of the moral 
convictions of men. If it is sometimes silent iu the sonl, 
it is because the moral perceptions have been dimmed by 
sin. It was to strengthen this conviction, to demonstrate 
its truth and its reason, to give the world, in a great object 
lesson, the proof that virtue does not die, that our Lord 
came back to earth. It was not only to show his own 
divinity ; it was also to show that virtue and holiness are 
immortal. 

And as it was not possible that he should be holden of 
death, so neither is it possible that any of those who have 
his life in them should be detained in that prison-house. 
This is no arbitrary decree by which a future life is assured 
to the disciples of Christ ; it is the law of the universe. 
Over such characters as his death has no power ; and they 
who by faith in him are brought into harmony with him in 
this life can never be the prey of the spoiler. " He that 
believeth in me," said the Master, " hath everlasting life." 
" This is the record," said the beloved disciple, " that God 
hath given to us eternal life, and that life is in his Son." 
Not promised, but given. It is not to be hoped for, it is to 
be rejoiced in. This word of the apostle's is not a 
testament ; it is an inventory. He who is one with Christ, 



238 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

who has the spirit of Christ, hath eternal life. What, to 
him, are all the vicissitudes and perils of our mortal state, 
all the sullen and ominous noises of the flood of years 
whose tides steadily gather round the narrow neck of land 
whereon he calmly waits? There is a hope within him that 
many waters cannot quench. His life is hid with Christ 
in God. 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 

i I Samuel xxiii : 4. 

"And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, 
even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out 
of the earth by clear shining after rain.^ 

We are standing once more among the glories of a 
new world. The heavens are old, they change not ; by 
day the same soundless blue or the same somber curtain- 
ing of clouds ; at night the same starry cope, upon whose 
arches the same constellations flash, in whose depths of 
gloom the same nebulae are hiding ; but the earth is new : 

we see 

" In all that meets the eyes 
The freshness of a glad surprise." 

New color is in the meadows, new blooms are in the borders, 
new songs in the branches. Some of the old furniture of 
the earth is here — the houses in which we live, the pave- 
ments on which we walk ; but the world itself is as new 
as it was when God first called the dry land earth and the 
gathering together of the waters seas — as new and a thous- 
and times as beautiful. How do I know? I know partly 
by experience. Is there any knowledge more certain? The 



2J{.0 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

earth is a great deal more beautiful now than it was when I 
was a boy ; the meadows are greener, the skies of May are 
sunnier, the blended colors and the mingled odors and the 
choiring voices of the world are fairer and sweeter every 
year. If the world has been going on in this way in my 
short day — from glory to glory — it is not unreasonable to 
suppose that it has always been going on in the same way ; 
and that it was far less beautiful when it first began to be 
than it is to-day. There are other evidences, to other minds 
doubtless more convincing, but I will not go into them ; 
that would lead us aside from the pleasant paths in which 
this morning we have chosen to go. 

But the miracle of spring once more repeated before 
our eyes, the return of the birds and the blossoms, the 
reviving of life in the fields and the woods — this is not to 
be lightly noted, not to be passed by as commonplace, but 
to be studied with reverence and beheld with wonder and 
rejoiced in with ever increasing thankfulness. 

Of all the things that come back to us from their long 
exile in the regions of winter, not the least pleasant, not the 
least welcome is the lowly grass. It was the last to leave 
us when the tribes of life took their departure. When the 
winter came in with his soft-footed frosts, and his careering 
blasts, and when, before his onset that grew deadlier, day 
by day, one after another of the green things growing failed 
and fled, the grass held its ground till all the rest had gone ; 
bravely it covered the retreat of its kindred ; its green pen- 
ants waved in the rear of the flying foliage and the depart- 
ing bloom. The brave beauties that held their heads so 
high in the soft days of spring and the proud months of 
midsummer v'anished long before the grass surrendered ; 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 2Jfl 

the forests, after all their songs of battle, and their boastful 
notes of victory over winds and snows, had folded their 
splendid banners many a day when the grass was still keep- 
ing guard over the graves of the dead flowers. The last to 
depart it is the first to return. Long before there is any 
sign of life in woodland or garden, long before the crocus 
lifts its head, and 

" Daffodils 

That come before the swallow dares and take 

The winds of March with beauty," 

have ventured from their beds, here and there upon a 
sunny southern slope a pale golden tinge appears, catching 
a little of the hue of the sky and growing steadily greener ; 
and the heightening color shows us that our humble fellow- 
creatures and steadfast friends, the grasses, are coming 
back to clothe the world with beauty. 

The words that I read for my text suggest not only to 
the poet a simile but to the teacher an analogy. They are 
the last words of David. " David the son of Jesse said, and 
the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the 
God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said : The 
Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was on my 
tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake 
to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the 
fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning 
when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds ; as the 
tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining 
after rain." 

The King of men must be clear and frank and open, 
ruling by truth and light, and not by artifice and diplo- 



2Jf2 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

macy ; a man without guile or concealment ; a man from 
whose face liars and tricksters flee as the fogs flee at the 
sunrising — "a morning without clouds." So much is 
plain. Just how the ruler is like unto " the tender grass 
springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain," may 
not be so evident. To our thought kingliness would seem 
more aptly figured by the oak or the elm, the palm or the 
pine, or some more stately growth of the kingdom of 
plants. It may be that King David was thinking of his 
own lowly origin, when he wrote these words ; or that he 
meant to hint at the humility that so well befits the great 
ones of earth. But though we may not be able to see very 
clearly how these words apply to kings — not being kings 
ourselves — we may discover some fruitful resemblances 
between the common people, the rest of us, and the tender 
grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. 
At any rate, we may discover in the grass, whose return to 
meadow and lawn is now making us glad, some native 
qualities that we by free choice and culture of the soul may 
seek to make our own. For there is no glory of sky or 
forest, no excellence of garden or meadow, nothing beau- 
tiful or beneficent in the world about us that may not have 
its fair reflection within us. That great doctrine of 
correspondences taught by Swedenborg is, for substance, 
true; all things natural are symbols of things spiritual; 
the teacher who taught in parables did not invent but 
reported the similitudes that he gave us ; and the tale of 
the parables will not be told till the microscope gives up its 
last secret, and the whole boundless universe is mapped 
and dissected and analyzed. 

When we study the similitude of the grass, then, we 
come first upon the quality of beauty. He who made 



THE GOSPEL TN THE GRASS. 21^8 

everything beautiful in its season made the grass to be 
beautiful in all seasons. The flowers have each its month ; 
though the foliage is bright in the early Spring most of it 
grows somewhat dull in spite of our best endeavors ; but 
the grass, if we give it kindly care, will show us its beauty 
all the season through, from early March to late November. 
How fair it is to look upon ! How winning to the eyes are 
the tints of that bank, the carpet of that lawn ! You call 
the grass green, but how many other hues are shot through 
its texture ! The sheen of burnished gold shines up from 
that sunny slope ; a ruddy flush passes over it as now the 
wind stirs it ; delicate browns and maroons and softest 
purples are mingled with all its vernal brightness. The 
painter who uses nothing but green lakes or chromium in 
painting grass gives us but a tame and conventional picture 
of its mottled and variegated masses. 

There is no sight so restful and welcome to the eye 
as a verdant meadow or a well kept lawn. Other natural 
growths are gayer and more brilliant ; they strike the sense 
with a keener excitement, but they do not give such solid 
and lasting gratification. The beauty of the grass is to 
other natural beauties what the wholesomeness of bread is 
to other forms of nutriment — it is the staff of visual 
pleasure as bread is of life. No wonder that it is ; it is God 
who so clothes it. A bright flower garden is a goodly sight, 
but the strongly accentuated color wears at length upon the 
eye. Mark tells of the feeding of the five thousand, in the 
place where there was "much grass;" the people were 
made to sit down, he says, platwise, like the beds in a 
garden ; the gay colors of the Oriental clothing made him 
think of the resemblance ; yet the frame was the best part 
of the picture, no doubt ; the grass, that spread its carpet 



244 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

for these thousands to sit upon, was what the eye-witness 
who describes the scene most gratefully remembers. 
Flowers are fair to see, yet round about our homes we 
choose to have the homely grass ; a bit of color here and 
there lights it up prettily, but nothing suits a home so well 
as the quiet greenness of a tidy lawn. 

How welcome to the foot as well as to the eye is the 
carpet of the early meadow ! From the uncertain footing 
of snow and ice, and the stubbornness of frozen ground 
and the dismal depths of March mud, what a delight it is 
to pass out upon the springing turf ! Many a wearied 
pedestrian of the pavements has found more soothing for 
his nerves in such a quiet stroll across a suburba'n pasture 
in early spring than all the drugs of the dispensary could 
give him. There are few things more trying to a tired man 
than the brusque legend that warns him, while grinding 
along upon the gravel of the park, to " keep off the grass." 
It is a hard thing to do. What is the grass for, he wants to 
know, if not to be a cushion for pinched and quivering feet, 
and a couch for weary limbs? 

The beauty and delightsomeness of the grass is scarcely 
marked, I suppose, by many of us, and chiefly because it is 
such a common thing, and such a modest thing. In a 
showery land like ours the abundance, the omnipresence of 
the grass make us unmindful of the pleasure it gives us. 
It enters into all our feasts of vision as a most delicate and 
pervasive flav8ring. but we cease to note the gratification 
that it brings. It incorporates itself into our life so fully 
that we take its good as we take the air or the sun- 
light, as a matter of course. Shut it away from our sight 
for one week of midsummer and we should begin to 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 2Jf5 

know how largely it enters into the sum of our enjoyments. 
Its modesty,' I say, as well as its commonness, is a 
reason why we do not think much about it. Nothing else 
gives us so much pleasure, yet nothing is so unpretending 
as the grass. It does not seek to flame in the sunshine 
as the flowers do, or to have the winds blow its trumpet 
as the forests do ; its only voice is the gentlest of sighs, 
audible only to one who bows down to listen ; but it keeps 
pouring into our lives a steady tide of gracious ministries. 
The flower of grass — for grass, like all its gayer kindred, 
has its own perfect flower — is the very incarnation of 
modesty. Studying this, let us listen to an interpretation 
of the parable of the grass, as its qualities are traced by 
one of keenest insight in a gracious human life : 

' ' The gracefulness that homely life takes on 

When love is at its roots, you saw in her ; 

No color, but soft tints in lovely blur — 
A charm which if so much as named was gone 

Like light out of a passing cloud. Yet when 
The fairer faces bloomed on you alone, 

Without the softening of her presence, then 
Into their look had something garish grown ; 

A tenderness had faded from the. air — 
A loss so suble and so undefined, 

The thought was blamed that hinted loss was there. 

The nature of such souls is to be blind 
To self and to self-seeking ; let them blend 

Their life as harmony and atmosphere 
With other lives ; let them but have a friend 

Whose merit they may set off or endear, 



%46 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

" And they are gladder than in any guess 
Or dream of their own separate happiness. 

Earth were not sweet without such souls as hers ; 

Even of the rose and lily one might tire ; 
She was the flower of grass, that only stirs 

To soothe the air, and nothing doth require 
But to forget itself in doing good — 
One of life's lowly, saintly multitude." 

Thus our friend has taught us one of the revelations 
of the Gospel in the grass. It is this unostentatious 
beauty, this humble ministry, this quiet and self-forgetful 
service that the grass symbolizes in leaf and flower. For 
such ministry as this no brilliant parts, no shining excel- 
lences of person or of mind are wanting. The humblest of 
us are called to it, and fitted to perform its sacred offices. 
Even as a homely and common thing like the grass makes 
up far the largest part of the great sum of visible beauty 
spread for the delight of men, so the homely virtues that 
adorn the characters and the common services that spring 
from the love of lowly men and women mnke up by far the 
largest part of the blessedness of life in the world. It is 
not the great makers of verse or song or statue, nor the 
great builders, nor the great Captains, nor the great explo- 
rers that are doing the most for this world, though the ser- 
vices that some of these have rendered may well be praised ; 
it is the unknown multitudes to whom most of our thanks 
are due ; the multitudes whose fidelity, whose tenderness, 
whose patient labor clothes the earth with beauty, as the 
tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining 
after rain. 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 2J+7 

" ' What shall I do, lest life in silence pass ? ' 
' And if it do, 
And never prompt the bray of noisy brass, 

What needst thou rue? 
Remember, aye the ocean-depths are mute ; 

The shallows roar ; 
Worth is the ocean ; fame is but the bruit 
Along the shore.' '.' 

We have seen that the grass ministers directly to the 
spiritual nature of man, by furnishing him an innocent 
pleasure, by filling him with a quiet joy which beauty 
always brings, by preaching to him its own pure gospel of 
gentleness and grace. But it ministers to coarser needs 
than these. It serves us in a way that will be more obvious 
to the unreflecting, yet that is still indirect and mediate. 
The physical wants of men the grass does not directly 
supply. The psalmist is speaking the language of science 
as well as of poetry when he says, " He causeth the grass to 
grow for the cattle and herb for the service of man." The 
word here translated " herb " in the original signifies those 
plants which are edible by man ; the word translated grass, 
all those plants which furnish food mainly to animals. 
This is the chief economical use of the grass. It does not 
nourish our bodies directly ; but it nourishes the lives of 
those creatures upon which we subsist. Is this ministry 
any the less beneficent because it is indirect? Are we any 
less indebted to the grass because the substance that its 
life organizes for us comes to us through other lives which 
it feeds and nourishes? 

Here again we find a lesson that need not detain us 



248 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

long. Much of the good that we do will be done indirectly. 
Truth that we impart to those nearest us will be imparted 
by them in their turn to others. Impressions made upon 
the lives of those about us by our characters and conduct 
will be reflected from their lives to the lives of others. But 
this is not all. We must not forget that much indirect and 
preparatory work must needs be done in morals and 
in religion. It is not always possible for us to reach 
directly the ultimate and supreme results of character in 
our work for others. It is sometimes a question whether 
those results are in any way directly attainable. The ways 
of spiritual culture are sometimes long and circuitous ; and 
there is no royal road to character any more than to 
knowledge. You would like to see the life of your friend 
and neighbor wholly transformed. He is now a gross, 
hard-natured, selfish man ; you want to see him changed 
into a gentle, amiable, pure-minded man. That is a most 
benevolent wish. But perhaps if you should go to work to 
secure that great change by preaching to him immediate 
repentance and radical reformation, you might fail of your 
purpose. That is just what he ought to do, no doubt 
of that ; but perhaps he is not yet ready for a moral 
revolution. It is sometimes necessary to take a character 
by siege ; the attempt to take it by storm is not only futile 
but disastrous. A great many things can be done for this 
man that would tend indirectly, but very effectually to 
bring about this result in his character. If you preached 
repentance to him he might turn you out of doors ; but if 
you fgive him a kindly word as now and then you meet 
him ; if you show yourself his friend sometimes at cost to 
yourself of time or toil or wounded sensibility ; if you 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 249 

approve yourself to him as the servant of a better Master, 
by pureness, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy 
Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the 
power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right 
hand and on the left, the Gospel as incarnated in you 
may make its impression on him, and though he would not 
receive your message when he heard it from your lips, he 
may be constrained to heed it when he sees it organized 
into your life. 

We sometimes seek to reform men who have fallen into 
vice, and fail because we aim directly at the result, and are 
not ready to do the indirect and preparatory work which is 
necessary in order that the reform may have some sure 
ground to go upon. This man is a drunkard. You want 
him to sign the plodge. That may be well ; but the danger 
is that he may not keep it. The man's habit of drinking is 
not an ultimate and isolated fact, out of all relation to 
other facts of his life and environment. There are reasons 
why he drinks ; they are not good and sufficient reasons ; 
they are bad and insufficient reasons; but they serve as 
motives to lead him into this evil course. You must get 
down to them, if you can, and remove them. Perhaps he is 
out of work, and low-spirited, and takes to drink in the 
hope of forgetting his anxieties. It is the device of a 
fool, of course ; for the remedy only aggravates the disease ; 
but this man is just such a fool as that, and there are many 
such. If you could help him to find work you might 
indirectly but very efficiently help him to reform. Perhaps 
he is lonely, and takes to the dram-shop for society. There 
ought to be places enough whi-re he could find pleasanter 
society. If you will provide such places and bring him 



250 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

into them, and make him at home in them, you will 
indirectly aid him to break off his evil habit. Perhaps he 
is wretched for some unexplained cause, and foolishly 
seeks to forget his wretchedness in the momentary exhilera- 
tion of the cup. If so, by doing what you innocently can 
to make him happier you will take away a good part of his 
temptation. 

My friends, this great evil of drunkenness is not merely 
the source of misery, it is a symptom of misery as well. 
People are not only miserable because they drink, they 
drink because they are miserable, and you will never get 
them to stop drinking, by the strongest laws that men can 
make and the strongest pledges men can frame, until you 
get at some of the causes of their vice and misery and 
remove them. The indirect work to be done in removing 
the evil of intemperance is measureless in its extent, and in 
its urgency, and the people who think they can cure it all 
by legislation or by preaching, either, have but childish 
notions of the real causes of it, or the depth to which 
its roots go down. 

So, then, the parable of the grass has taught us once 
more not to despise the ministry that is indirect and medi- 
ate, that spends itself before its end is reached ; the service 
that begins a long way from the reward and works toward 
it silently and patiently, content to merge itself in other 
lives, and to let the fruit of its sowing be reaped by other 
hands. 

In the gospel of the grass we read also a homily on 
discipline and how to bear it. The grass thrives on it. The 
oftener it is cut the greener is its hue, the thicker its texture 
the softer the nap of its velvety carpeting. You can over- 



THE GOSPEL IN THE GRASS. 251 

prune almost everything else that grows except the grass. 
All of us need more or less discipline, but we do not 
always take it kindly. It is for our own good that we are 
cut back now and then. " Every branch in me that beareth 
fruit he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." 
But these severities, though they are calculated to bring 
forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness, do not always 
have that effect, because of our perverseness. We some- 
times weep, as the vine does when it is trimmed, pouring 
out the strength of our lives in unavailing lamentations. 
This is not needful, nor is it right. It is for us to choose 
how we will be affected by the trials through which we 
pass ; it is for us to find in the discipline of life what the 
grass finds under the whirling knives of the mower, refine- 
ment and vigor and beauty. 

One of the commonest of the messages of the grass to 
men is the truth of our mortality : " As for man his days 
are as grass ; as a flour of the field so he flourisheth ; for 
the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place 
thereof knoweth it no more. In the morning they are like 
grass that groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and 
groweth up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth." 
I need not emphasize the message. Even amid the fresh 
verdure of May you will not forget it. The tender grass 
springing out of the earth to-day will soon return to earth 
as it was, and so will you. " Whatsoever therefore thy 
hand now findeth to do, do it with thy might." 

But there is one more message not quite so common- 
place, that we will hear before we go, by the lips of another 
interpreter, from this lowly preacher : 



252 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

' ' My days are as the grass ; 
Softly my seasons pass, 

And like the flower of the field I fade ; 
soul, dost thou not see 
The wise have likened thee 

To the most living creature that is made? 

" My days are as the grass ; 

The sliding waters pass 
Under my roots ; upon me drops the cloud ; 

And not the stately trees 

Have kindlier ministries ; 
The heavens are too lofty to be proud. 

' ' My days are as the grass ; 

The feet of trouble pass 
And leave me trampled that I cannot rise ; 

But wait a little while, 

And I shall lift and smile 
Before the sweet congratulating skies ! " 

' ' My days are as the grass ; 
Soon out of sight I pass, 

And in the bleak earth I must hide my head ; 
The wind that passes o'er 
Will find my place no more — 

The wind of death will tell that I am dead. 

" But how shall I rejoice, 
When I shall hear the voice 

Of Him who, keeping Spring with Him alway , 
Lest hope from man should pass, 
Hath made us as the grass, 

The grass that always has another day ! " 






THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 



ZECHARIAH IV: I|-I4. 

" Then answered I and said unto him, What are these two olive trees 
upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side 
thereof? And I answered again and said unto him, What be 
these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty 
the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, 
Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my Lord. 
Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the 
Lord of the whole earth." 

This vision of the prophet is much less mystical than 
many of those recorded in the Old Testament. The picture 
that he saw is set before us with distinctness, and the 
meaning of the symbol is not obscure. 

" As a man that is wakened out of his sleep " was 
the prophet, when before his eyes came this bright vision. 
"What seest thou?" demanded the revealing and inter- 
preting angel. And the prophet made reply: "I have 
looked and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl 
upon the top of it — [the bowl being, no doubt, the common 
reservoir for the oil] and his seven lamps thereon, and 
seven pipes to the seven lamps which are upon the top 
thereof [the pipes, evidently, communicating with the bowl.] 



25J/. THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

And the two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the 
bowl and one upon the left side thereof." Moreover these 
olive trees were connected by golden pipes with the bowl of 
the great candlestick, and they were continually emptying 
the golden oil out of themselves into this bowl, supplying, 
in this manner, the lamps with abundance of oil. Such 
was the striking symbol that appeared to the prophet. 
It is not strange that it riveted his attention and aroused 
his wonder. 

The significance of the central figure — the candlestick, 
or candelabrum, all of gold — he knows perfectly. Con- 
cerning that he asks no questions. Is the meaning equally 
clear to all of us? 

To every student of the Biblical symbolism the answer 
will at once be suggested. The golden candelabrum or 
lamp-stand always symbolizes the Church. In the Apoca- 
lypse the seven candlesticks, or lamp-stands, are the seven 
churches. The Church is represented, not as the light 
of the world, but as the receptacle or support of the light. 
The light is divine ; the flame that illuminates and cheers 
and warms and vivifies is kindled from off the heavenly 
altars ; it is the Promethean spark by which the world 
is enlightened ; but the place where this divine fire is 
guarded and kept burning is the Church of God. This 
is the point at which the divine energy and the human 
sensibility meet and mingle. The spirit of man is the 
candle of the Lord ; the Church is the candlestick in which 
the light is set, that its flame may be protected, and its 
brightness diffused. The single lamp-stand, seen by the 
Revelator in the Apocalypse, may be regarded as repre- 
senting the local church ; the great candelabrum, with its 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 255 

seven branching lamps, the symbol of completeness, may 
be the type of the church universal. 

To the mind of this prophet, however, the figure had a 
larger meaning than these words have conveyed to most 
of us. The candelabrum all of gold was indeed to him the 
symbol of the Church of God in its latter-day glory ; but 
what, to him, was the Church of God? Was it an organi- 
zation purely religious, concerning itself wholly with 
worship and sacrifice, with those interests that we call 
spiritual as contrasted with those that we call secular? 
By no means. The Jewish Church and the Jewish nation 
were not twain but one. That sharp discrimination which 
we make between things sacred and things secular the 
devout Jew did not make at all. Between politics and 
religion he drew no line ; economics and ethics did not 
belong to separate realms ; if one part of life was more 
sacred than emother, it was only a matter of more and less ; 
there was no radical diversity among its parts ; they were 
all held together in one divine unity. The last words 
of this prophecy of Zechariah put strikingly before us this 
deepest thought of the Hebrew religion : '' In that day 
shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto 
the Lord" — the same sublime inscription that was engra- 
ven on the High Priest's crown ; " and the pots in the Lord's 
house " — the least honorable of all the temple vessels — 
"shall be like the bowls before the altar" — the most sacred 
vases that received the blood of the sacrificial victims. 
And not only so : " every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah 
shall be Holiness unto the Lord of hosts." The verv 
kitchen utensils in the homes of the people should be 
counted sacred, for all life was to be sanctified ; every meal 



256 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

should be a sacrament and every menial task a holy service. 

It must be admitted that this old Hebrew conception is 
a little nobler and finer than the theory of life that 
generally prevails among us. For certain historical rea- 
sons, which we cannot now carefully trace, we have come 
to make a broad distinction between that part of life which 
is sacred, and that part which 'is secular. Temporalities 
are in one category, and spiritualities in another; and we 
think of the two classes of interests as antithetical and 
even hostile the one to the other. So we divide the Church 
from the State by a bottomless chasm, and make politics 
and religion two wholly distinct departments of life. 

There are reasons for this, as I have said ; for our 
fathers came in contact with a kind of union between the 
temporal and spiritual powers against which, with good 
cause, they protested and fought. We have inherited their 
repugnance and have emphasized their protest. Indeed we 
have gone much further than they ever went in insisting 
upon the separation of the Church from the State. They 
were opposed to some kinds of union between the 
spiritual and the temporal governments, but not to all 
kinds. They feared the Papacy, with its persecution of 
heretics by the secular arm ; they did not love the English 
establishment much better, nor indeed had they much more 
reason ; but many among them did think it would be an 
excellent thing to have their own form of faith established 
and enforced by law. They were not agreed about this ; for 
there was a party among them who consistently opposed all 
establishments of religion, and wished that no form of 
faith should be proscribed, and none prescribed ; that all 
should be protected and all be free. Yet the Pilgrims, who 



THE CONSECRATION OF FHE PEOPLE. 257 

belonged to this latter party, made no clear distinction, in 
the organization of their colony, between the secular and 
the spiritual ; in fact they came not to found a State,' at all, 
but only a Church ; the spiritual element overshadowed 
and dwarfed the temporal. Their reason for coming, as 
given in their own words, was "the great hope and inward 
zeal they had of laying some good foundation for the 
propagating and advancing the Kingdom of Christ in these 
remote parts of the world." And in all the communities 
planted by them throughout New England, town and 
Church were one ; none but Church members could vote in 
town meeting ; the town built the church and the parson- 
age, called the minister, and paid his salary. The theories 
of our fathers about the relations of Church and State were 
therefore somewhat confused, and their practices not always 
in accordance with their principles. Yet there was some- 
thing noble in their inconsistency. They were clinging to 
an ideal that it was hard to realize ; they were endeavoring 
to work out a scheme that required for its successful 
operation a degree of spirituality and charity that was not 
possessed by their generation, and has not been gained by 
any succeeding generation. It was inevitable, when free- 
dom of thought on religious subjects was granted, that 
there would be diversities of opinion ; that these diversities 
would be emphasized and magnified by human selfishness 
and contentiousness, until they became hardened into sects ; 
that the State must then withdraw from all affiliation with 
these contending sects, protecting all, and preferring none ; 
and that thus the union of the temporal and the spiritual 
realms which the Pilgrim Fathers undertook to establish on 
these shores should come to an end. 



258 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

The complete divorce between the Church and the State 
which exists among us is, therefore, the result of sectarian 
divisions. If there were but one Church, or if, in the great 
interests for which they are working, there were a real 
practical unity among Christians of all names, it would be 
easy to secure a much closer affiliation of the Church with 
the State. That such a practical unity is one day to be 
realized, I have no doubt. The era of schism is passing. 
There have been days when, as the Psalmist says, " a man 
was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the 
thick trees," yea, upon the goodly cedars that stand for pil- 
lars of the temple of God. The church-splitter has been a 
conspicuous and highly popular personage ; the founder of 
a new sect was almost as distinguished as the inventor of a 
new patent medicine. Thus a late Russian explorer was 
able to find on this continent, as he said, three hundred and 
sixty-five different religions, not one of which, we may add, 
was simple Christianity ; every one of which was a little 
more or a little less than simply Christian, and unchristian 
to precisely the extent to which it emphasized its pet pecu- 
liarity. This is religious liberty run mad. For such a state 
of things there is no justification. People keep saying that 
the division of the church into sects is a good thing ; what 
sort of a good thing ? Is it one of those good things of 
which it is not possible to have too much ? Shall we go on 
splitting the church into smaller and smaller fragments ? 
If not, why not ? Are there too man}' of these fragments 
now ? And if there are, where shall we begin the work of 
consolidation, and where shall we stop ? Suppose that in 
this work of gathering together the scattered groups of 
disciples, we had reduced the " three hundred and sixty-five 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 259 

religions," more or less, of the Russian traveler to a dozen, 
or a half dozen ? Would that be just enough ? Would not 
the reasons that had urged union up to this point continue 
to urge a further effort in the direction of unity ? Depend 
upon it, my friends, when that movement toward unity once 
sets in, it will sweep away all the barriers of sectarianism. 
Sectarianism is the fruit of intellectual pride and self-will 
and passion for leadership ; so long as these bad elements 
rule in the Church, divisions will continue and multiply, 
and there is no end to them; the doctrine of the infinite 
divisibility of the Church and the blessedness of disunion 
come to be regarded as elements of orthodoxy. But once 
let the principles of Christianity itself begin to control the 
organization of churches ; once let men begin to see that 
tolerance and self-denial, and a spirit of co-operation are 
virtues that are required in the organization and manage- 
ment of churches as much as in the relations of individuals, 
and the centripetal and cohesive forces will begin to act ir- 
resistibly. The pressure of these forces is already felt in 
many quarters; the era of disintegration is well nigh past; 
the era of consolidation is at hand. We shall keep all de- 
sirable diversities of ritual and polity ; we shall not have 
uniformity in the modes of worship or of work ; but we 
shall have, by and by, a real and practical union of believers 
in Christian work ; a union that shall sweep away the 
hateful and wasteful rivalries between churches, and replace 
them with good will, and mutual helpfulness ; so that 
nothing shall be done for sect's sake merely, but everything 
for Christ's sake and the gospel's. 

Of course this practical union can never be realized, 
until the different sects all learn to exalt that which is 



260 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

essential, above that which is secondary. The things that 
are essential are the values of character — righteousness, 
purity and love ; the things that are secondary are rites and 
forms and dogmas. It is only by making these lesser 
things supreme that sects are created ; the moment the 
values of character, the interests of righteousness, the 
motives of love are made supreme, the sects and schisms 
will cease. There will still be diversities of administration, 
but there will be substantial union — a union not merely 
sentimental, but practical; friendly consultation, and co- 
operation among Christians of every name in every com- 
munity, resulting in the concentration of their energies 
upon their common work — one Church to all intents and 
purposes, realizing, as it has never yet been realzed in this 
world, the last prayer of Christ for his disciples. 

And when the Church of God in the world shall thus 
be one, it will be possible to bring it into the closest rela- 
tions with the State. So long as the Church stands mainly 
for dogmas or rites or forms its separation from the State 
must be complete ; but so soon as the Church shall unitedly 
stand for righteousness as the principal thing, its main 
interest will be identical with the main interest of the State, 
and the two must meet and mingle ; they cannot stay 
apart ; Christians, standing together in one body, will take 
possession of the State, will be the State ; and the} 7 will 
administer its affairs in such a way as to secure justice and 
order, purity and peace, safe liberty and firm government. 
Thus the vision of the prophet shall come true ; the candle- 
stick, all of gold, that symbolizes no mere churchdom, and 
no mere secular satrapy, but the one undivided Kingdom of 
God in the world, shall be lifted to its place in that temple 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 261 

of redeemed humanity that shall stand at the latter day in 
the midst of the city of God. 

The wish for the union of Church and State which has 
always been cherished by some good men is not then a 
chimera ; it is a prophecy of the thing that shall be. Like 
a great many other good things, the time is not yet ripe for 
it ; and its advent cannot be forced, any more than you can 
hasten by resolutions, or laws, or constitutional amend- 
ments the coming of the Spring ; but come at length it 
surely will. When the Church and the State both come 
into the full comprehension of their real mission in the 
earth, they will unite as quickly and as perfectly as two 
water drops that rush together when they touch and are 
mingled into one. Then it will appear that what we call the 
State is not less sacred than what we call the Church ; that 
all life is sacred ; that the high calling of God summons us 
not only to the closet and the altar, but to the wprkshop, 
the kitchen, the school, the field, the forum, the court, — to 
be, in every vocation, witnesses for Christ and servants 
of man. "And this," says Dr. Bushnell, in a noble passage, 
"is the true issue of that 'great hope and inward zeal' which 
impelled our fathers in the migration. * * * * All 
kinds of progress, political and spiritual, coalesce and work 
together in our history, and will do so in all the race, till 
finally it is is raised to its true summit of greatness, felicity 
and glory in God and religion. And when that summit is 
reached, it will be found that, as Church and State must be 
parted, in the crumbling and disintegrating processes of 
freedom, so, in freedom attained, they will coalesce again, 
not as Church and State, but in such kind of unity as well 
nigh removes the distinction — the peace and love and 



262 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

world-wide brotherhood, established under moral ideas, 
and the eternal truths of God's eternal kingdom." 

We have reached, I think, in our discussion, the full 
meaning of the central symbol of the prophet's vision. But 
we have not yet come to the question that graveled him, and 
that he thrice repeated. "What are these two olive trees on 
the right side of the candlestick and on the left side 
thereof?" What the golden candelabrum signified he 
knew very well ; but these two olive trees, growing on either 
side of it, connected with it by golden pipes, and pouring a 
perennial supply of golden oil, pure and precious, into the 
golden bowl — what did they symbolize? 

The figure is indeed a striking one. The candelabrum 
needs to be constantly replenished with oil. The oil is the 
motive power, the illuminating principle. A lamp without 
oil is like a river without water or a body without a soul. 
But the lamps of the candelabrum seem to be furnished in 
a wonderful manner. The olive trees secrete the oil, and 
empty it out of themselves; no oil mills or presses inter- 
vene ; there is no machinery about it ; the oil is not manu- 
factured, it grows ; the powers of life produce it, and pour 
it, in a constant supply, into the branching tubes of the 
candelabrum. 

But what is the oil thus provided? Plainly it must be 
taken here to represent the divine inspiration which is the 
power that moves and the life that energizes the Kingdom 
of God in the world. It is the immanent and perennial 
grace of Him " whose light is truth, whose warmth is love." 
It is the influx of his being of whom it was said, " In Him 
was life and the life was the light of men." The divine 
influence, the divine energy, the divine inspiration are 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 

symbolized by the oil, with which the lamps of the cande- 
labrum were thus marvellously supplied. But again the 
prophet's question returns, "What are these two olive 
trees?" " Knowest thou not?" the angel queries. "No, 
my Lord," he replies. Then, said he, "These are the two 
anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth." 
But who are the two anointed ones? To the prophet 
but one answer was possible. They were the king and the 
priest. Kings and priests were anointed with oil when they 
were inducted into office. The pouring of the sacred oil 
upon their heads signified the communication to them of 
the divine grace. The thought was that no man could be 
king, and no man priest, unless he was filled with the 
spirit and power of God. The one needed it as much as the 
other ; it was the very condition of kingship and priest- 
hood. And it was believed not only that the grace of God 
was thus imparted to them, but that it was communicated 
through them to the Church and the Nation ; they were the 
channels through which blessings flowed from heaven to 
earth. The two olive trees, therefore, as the angel inter- 
prets the vision of the prophet, were the two anointed ones 
then standing before the Lord in the temple, Zerubbabel, 
the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and Joshua, the son 
of Josedeck the high priest — the two men in whom, as we 
are told, the spirit of the Lord was dwelling ; the two men 
who were working together, with one mind, to rebuild the 
temple and restore to the holy place the glory that had 
departed ; the men whose work God had promised to 
crown with abundant honor, when, at length, the capstone 
should be laid with shoutings of " Grace, grace unto it ! " 
These were the olive trees of the prophet's vision, the living 



264 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

sources of inspiration and help to the restored and glorified 
kingdom. 

To the prophet, when the angel had explained the 
symbol, the meaning was plain ; to us what does this part 
of the vision signify? With us there is neither king nor 
priest. Are there no channels, therefore, through which 
the divine energy is conveyed to the Kingdom of God in 
the world? Are there no provisions made for feeding the 
'candlestick with heavenly flame — no anointed ones that 
stand before the Lord to receive and impart the gifts of 
light and love and power? Some of those among us who 
hold the sacerdotal theory, and the old notion of the divine 
right of kings, might answer this question in a sense not 
different from that in which a devout Hebrew would have 
answered it. The king and the priest are still, they might 
say, the special representatives and vicegerents of God. 
But we, with our republican or democratic theories of 
Church and State, have room for no such explanation. 
Does this part of the parable then fail us altogether? 

By no means. We were hasty when we admitted that 
there were among us no kings nor priests. Pause a 
moment in the presence of this bright vision, and listen ! 
Can you not hear the echoes of the great ascription of 
praise that rings out so often amid the voices of the 
Apocalypse, from the hosts of the redeemed — " Unto him 
that hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his own 
blood and hath made us kings and priests unto God f Every 
loyal son of God, by faith, is both a king and a priest. All 
you that believe, says Peter, are "a royal priesthood." 
Faith gives to all believers all the rights and privileges of 
the sons of God ; makes them priests to minister and kings 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 265 

to reign. And even as kings and priests of old were 
anointed, so, says the apostle, speaking to all the sons of 
God, " Ye have an anointing from the Holy One ; " not the 
chrism of oil, but the immediate gift of that grace which 
the oil symbolizes. " The anointing which ye have received 
of him abideth in you, and * * * teacheth you of all 
things, and is truth and is no lie." 

Here, then, we find that the vision has to us a meaning 
far larger and grander than it could have had to the 
prophet. The " two anointed ones " whom he saw have 
become a great company that no man can number, and 
they stand before the Lord day and night, praising him who 
hath made them kings and priests to God. The grace that 
was specialized in the olden time is generalized in the new ; 
the right of standing before the Lord of the whole earth, of 
receiving his messages, of transmitting his truth and his 
love and his power, is not restricted to a few ; it belongs to 
all faithful and loyal souls. 

There is no sure foundation of popular governments in 
Church or State save as this principle is recognized. 
Republicanism and Protestantism both imply the inspira- 
tion of the people. There is no special grace conferred on 
magistrates or clergy ; the power is with the people, but it is 
only because God is with the people ; there is no power but 
of God ; if God be not with the people, the people have no 
more right than the veriest usurper to rule in Church or 
State. We speak of the old Jewish nation as a theocracy, 
and conceive that as such its government differed radically 
from every other government. Not at all. Unless your 
democracy is in the broadest and deepest sense a theocracy, 
unless God is ruling the Nation through the hearts and 



266 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

lives of the people, there is no security or peace for the 
Nation. And what is true of the Nation is not less true of 
the Church. A republican government in which the people 
are not loyal to God is a league with death and a covenant 
with hell ; a Protestant Church, in which the brotherhood 
are not filled with the Spirit, is full of confusion and every 
evil work. The inspiration of the people, the anointing of 
the people with consecrating grace, the lifting of the people 
to the altars of ministry and the thrones of power — this is 
the watchword of the Christian dispensation. 

I fear that we do not always grasp this truth in its 
completeness. We do not apprehend the vital relation 
which the members of our churches sustain to the 
churches — the fact that the organization does not sanctify 
the membership, but that the organization itself becomes 
sacred through the consecrating grace abiding in the lives 
of a holy membership. 

Still less do we comprehend the importance of the 
relation which we as citizens sustain to the State.' It is 
one of the commonplaces of the newspaper and the school- 
room that ours is a government of the people, as well as by 
and for the people ; but it is one of those commonplaces 
that has little power over the lives of the citizens. The 
average American, in prosperous circumstances, habitually 
conceives of the government of his country or his State or 
his city as something apart from himself — something with 
which he has no vital relation. He scolds a great deal 
about the government, and never considers that he is scold- 
ing himself. The people in office are the government ; how 
they came to be in office he does not often inquire. If it is 
convenient, he votes, on election day ; but it is frequently 



THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE, 267 

managed so that in voting he can only make a choice 
between two evils ; and it does not occur to him that any 
responsibility for reforming the management rests upon his 
shoulders. Voting is, under these circumstances, dubious 
business ; it becomes a serious question whether it is worth 
while to vote ; but, having voted, our average citizen deems 
his duty completely done ; what remains is the inalienable 
right of grumbling at the bad streets, and the poor schools, 
and the shocking morals, and the high taxes.* 

Two things are necessary ; first that the olive trees 
should generate the golden oil — that the people should 
have in themselves abundant moral energy ; and secondly 
that there should be the golden pipes connecting the olive 
trees with the candelabrum — the people must be in close 
and constant relation with the machinery of their govern- 
ment, so that their moral energy may flow into it, and 
vitalize and reinforce it continually. I do not think that 
the people ought, ordinarily, to undertake, by means of 
independent, volunteer agencies, to enforce the laws ; the 
people have put that work into the hands of the constituted 
authorities, who are their servants to do this very thing ; 
they ought not to take it out of their hands ; but they 
ought to give them any aid and encouragement that they 
can in doing the work, and they ought to see to it that the 
work is done ; to watch the manner in which it is done ; to 
be ready summarily to set aside those who will not do their 
bidding. The need of a near and constant relation between 
the body of good citizens and the men whom they employ 
to administer the government is the one crying need of our 
American politics. The supply of oil to the candelabrum 
in the prophet's vision was not fitful or semi-occasional; 



268 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

the olive trees did not come about the candlestick once in 
a while and drip a little oil into the bowl ; they were planted 
right beside it ; they lived there ; they grew there, and they 
poured the golden oil out of themselves into the golden 
bowl perennially. Thus the moral energy of the body of 
good citizens, the flame of a holy enthusiasm for virtue, 
must be communicated continually to those who are placed 
in authority. It is the only motive power of good adminis- 
tration, and there is no other way, in a republic, of supply- 
ing this motive power. 

Of good administration, I said, it is the only motive 
power. But there is plenty of power of a very different 
sort, steadily brought to bear upon your officers, instigating 
them to bad administration. There are a great many cities 
in this country, whose candelabrum of civil magistracy is 
surrounded, I fear, by altogether different scenery from that 
which appeared in Zachariah's vision. If some prophet 
should be inspired to show us, in pictorial symbolism, the 
sources from which many of our municipal governments 
draw their inspiration, he would reveal to us, instead of the 
olive-tree, a gin-mill, and instead of the golden pipe, the 
worm of the still. Fed by such supplies, it is no marvel 
that the lamp of the civil power often burns luridly and 
balefully, filling the air with sulphurous stench and noxious 
vapor, and only serving to add danger and terror to the 
surrounding darkness. 

It rests with us, fellow citizens, to say with what kind 
of fuel this lamp of ours shall be fed ; what kind of inspira- 
tion shall be potent with the people who execute our laws. 
Doubtless it is our first business to put into the places of 
authority men who will be open to good influences — 






THE CONSECRATION OF THE PEOPLE. 269 

naturally and habitually en rapport with the best elements 
of society, instead of the worst elements ; then it is our 
business to keep ourselves in constant communication with 
them, to vitalize their virtue, and feed the flame of their 
zeal for righteousness. 

The government of this city is put into our hands. It 
is a grave responsibility. Municipal government in all our 
great cities is becoming more and more complex ; the 
problem of administration is a difficult one ; the opportuni- 
ties for waste, for plunder, for mischief of all sorts multiply 
as the machinery becomes more intricate ; the pressure of 
the disorderly classes against all the restraints of law 
becomes more and more determined ; there is need of 
knowledge, and trained faculty, and ripe experience, and 
courage, and probity in the men who preside in its councils 
and manage its affairs. When requisition is made upon 
such men for service, let them not excuse themselves. If 
there is one call of God more distinct, more imperative at 
this day than all others, it is that which summons good 
men to take the places of trust in the municipal governments 
of this country. No appeal for soldiers in the day of 
the nation's distress was ever more urgent ; no voice from 
Macedonia, crying for missionary volunteers, ever deserved 
to rouse a holier enthusiasm, or to kindle a more conse- 
crated purpose. To refuse to obey this call ; to turn away, 
one to his clients and another to his mines and another 
to his merchandise, when such a duty invites, is a 
kind of infidelity of which good men ought not be 
guilty. I lay it on your consciences, my fellow citizens, 
and I believe that the message which I utter is one that 
has been given me by Him whose commission I bear, 



270 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

that you must manfully take up these duties and discharge 
them in the fear of God. 

With good men sitting in the places of trust, and, 
round about them, the multitude of anointed ones, to fill 
and replenish their hearts with the strength of virtue, we 
may trust that the light in our candlestick will burn with a 
pure and steady flame ; that peace and health and thrift 
will abide within our borders, and that every year will 
bring us some new reasons for thanksgiving. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 



Isaiah m: 2-3. 

" And in the last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the 
Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and 
shall be exalted above the hills-, and all nations shall flow unto 
it. And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up 
to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; 
and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths : 
for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord 
from Jerusalem.'''' 

It is quite the fashion in these days for those who 
do not believe in the Christian religion to bestow on it 
their patronage. The Bible is full of delusion and false- 
hood, but they regard it, on the whole, as a book that 
deserves notice ; parts of it are almost as good as the 
Rig- Veda. The Church has been the handmaid of bigotry 
and superstition, yet they find in the history of the Church 
some passages that are inspiring. Jesus of Nazareth was 
a teacher in whose doctrine they find many things to set 
right ; yet, so rich were his contributions to ethical science 
that they feel themselves justified in bestowing on him 
a qualified approval. 



272 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

This fashion of patronizing Christianity may have 
been set by Goethe. Into that temple of the future which 
he describes in his Tale, the little hut of the fisherman, by 
which he symbolizes Christianity, was graciously admitted. 
" This little hut had, indeed, been wonderfully transfigured. 
By virtue of the Lamp locked up in it [the light of reason] 
the hut had been converted from the inside to the outside 
into solid silver. Ere long, too, its form changed ; for the 
noble metal shook aside the accidental shape of planks, 
posts and beams, and stretched itself out into a noble case 
of beaten, ornamented workmanship. Thus a fair little 
temple stood erected in the middle of the large one ; or, if 
you will, an altar worthy of the temple." This is Goethe's 
view of the Church of the Future. He has been magnani- 
mous enough to provide a niche for it in the perfected 
temple of the Great Hereafter ; it is to serve as a pretty 
decoration of that grand structure, as a dainty bit of 
bric-a-brac. 

About twenty-five centuries before Goethe's day 
another poet, dwelling somewhere in the fastnesses of 
Syria, had visions of the future in form and color quite 
unlike this of the German philosopher. Isaiah was this 
ancient seer's name, and the words which describe the 
vision to which I refer have already been read in your 
hearing. In this poet's sight of the Latter Day, the Church 
of God is not merely a feature ; it furnishes the outline ; it 
fills the whole field of vision. It is not merely a trait of 
the picture, it is the picture. Instead of putting the 
Church into a niche in the temple of the future, to be kept 
there as a kind of heir-loom — a well-preserved antique 
curiosity — Isaiah insists that the Church is the temple and 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 273 

that all stores and forces of good are to be gathered into it, 
to celebrate its empire and to decorate its triumph. The 
mountain of the Lord's house, the typical Zion on which 
the spiritual church is builded, is to be exalted above all 
other eminences. Toward that all eyes shall turn ; toward 
that all paths shall lead; toward that shall journey with 
joy all pilgrim feet. For the heralds of its progress, for 
the missionaries of its glad tidings it shall have many 
nations ; it shall give to all the world the ruling law and 
the informing word. 

This is Isaiah's view of the Church of the Future. 
When twenty-five centuries more shall have passed it will 
be easier to tell whether the Hebrew or the German was the 
better seer. 

Isaiah shows us the Church of the Future only in 
outline ; the great fact which he gives us is that in the last 
days the spiritual Jerusalem shall gather into itself all the 
kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them. It may 
be possible for us in some indistinct way to fill in this 
outline ; to imagine, if we cannot prophesy, what the scope 
and character of the future Church shall be. 

I. Will it have a creed? To this some persons will be 
inclined to answer that creeds of all kinds will be outworn 
and discarded when the glory of the Lord is fully revealed. 
The undue prominence which these formularies of faith 
have had in the past — the preference which has often been 
given to that sort of Christianity which is intellectual over 
that which is ethical or spiritual — has led many persons 
to undervalue those expressions of truth which, in all ages, 
the Church has possessed. A creed is only a statement, 
more or less elaborate, of the facts and principles of relig- 



27 If. THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

ion accepted by those who adhere to it. Religion is not 
wholly an affair of the emotions ; it involves the apprehen- 
sion of truth. In the future, as in the past, this truth must 
be stated, in order to be apprehended. A man's creed is 
what he believes ; and there must be creeds as long as there 
are believers. 

It is probable, however, that the creeds may be con- 
siderably modified as the years pass. Certainly they have 
been undergoing modifications, continually, through the 
centuries gone by. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes told the 
graduating class at the Bellevue Medical College a few years 
ago that he would rather be carried through a course of 
fever by the poorest scholar in that class than by the best 
physician alive in the days of the famous Hush. This is a 
startling testimony to the progress of medical science. 
Has theological science been advancing at the same rate? 
Hardly ; nevertheless the changes have been many and 
important. The elements of theology are subtle ; the move- 
ments of thought are often difficult to trace ; but the careful 
student discovers wonderful transformations in the ruling 
ideas of theology from age to age. The point of view in 
theology may be said to have wholly changed within two 
hundred years. So great has been the progress that we 
often find men who have a reputation for intelligence deny- 
ing, ignorantly or disingenuously, the plainest facts of 
history, and contending that nobody ever believed doctrines 
that were almost universally received in the days of their 
great grandfathers. To the mind of the Church to-day it is 
almost incredible that certain beliefs of a century or two 
ago ever could have been held at all. 

It must be understood, however, that the changes 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 275 

through which theological science has been passing have 
been changes of spirit rather than of substance, of form 
more than of fact. The essential truth remains. The 
historical elements of Christianity are not altered; the 
words of Christ remain as true as when they were uttered ; 
the person of Christ is still the unifying and reconciling 
force in all our theological systems ; but our explanations 
of the facts of Christianity, and our theories of the rela- 
tions of God to men are greatly modified by the growth of 
knowledge. Most important, however, of all the factors by 
which changes in theology are produced is the purified 
ethical conciousness of the race, through. which such words 
as justice and righteousness take on larger and nobler 
meanings. The great changes in theology are moral 
changes. Theology is constantly becoming less material- 
istic and more ethical. This progress will continue through 
the future. 

The creed of the future will contain, I have no doubt, 
the same essential truth that is found in the creeds of the 
present ; but there may be considerable difference in the 
phrasing of it, and in the point of view from which it is 
approached. 

1. Men will believe, in the future as in the present, in 
an infinite personal God, the Creator, the Ruler, the Father 
of men. The speculations of science will not destroy the 
faith of men in the existence of such a Being. That a 
Power may be behind all the forces of nature — the Supreme 
Energy from which they all proceed — science does not now 
deny; the most that she can say is that the Power is 
unknowable. When she says that, she seems to me to deny 
herself. To declare that any fact or event is unknowable is 



276 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

unscientific. It is the business of science to find out and 
set in order things known, not to dogmatize about what 
knowledge is possible. The scientific men may say that 
the existence of God has not yet been demonstrated by 
their investigations ; they have no right to say that it never 
will be scientifically demonstrated. 

But, whether the investigations of physical science ever 
lead to this result or not, there is no reason to doubt that 
the faith of men will cling, in the future as in the past, to 
the existence of a conscious personal God. The better man 
knows himself, and his own needs, the stronger will be his 
conviction of his personal relations to such a divine Being. 
Nothing else will satisfy the hunger of his spirit. They 
point us to Nature, but there is no voice in Nature that 
answers the soul's deepest want. They tell us of a reign 
of law, but law is a sovereign that cannot forgive our 
sins or comfort us in our sorrows. The abstract, im- 
personal Force to which Agnosticism leads us has no 
relation to that which is deepest in man, and can have 
none. Christ bade us love the Lord our God with all 
our heart and mind and soul. Can any man ever be 
perfectly happy until he has found some Being whom 
he can love in this way? Must not the Being who is 
worthy to be loved in this way be both perfect and infinite? 
And is it possible for a man to love with heart and mind 
and soul, any Being, however vast or powerful, that has 
neither heart nor mind nor soul? 

2. Concerning the mode of the divine existence, men 
will learn in the future to speak more modestly than they 
have spoken in the past. It will become more and more 
evident that it is not possible to put the infinite into terms 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 277 

of the finite. There is the doctrine of the Trinity ; there is 
truth in it, or under it ; but can any one put that truth into 
propositions that shall be definite and not contradictory ? 
Men have been trying to do this ever since the Council of 
Nicsea, with very indifferent success. We need to know 
God under the three characters of Father, Word and 
Spirit — as the Supreme Creator and Sovereign, the Incar- 
nate Divinity, and the Indwelling Life ; yet these are not 
three Gods, and any forms of statement which give the 
impression that there are three are, to say the least, unfortu- 
nate and misleading. While, therefore, the essential truth 
which underlies this doctrine of the Trinity will grow 
more and more precious, the attempt to define it is likely to 
be abandoned. 

If one may judge the future by the past there is no 
reason to fear that the person of Jesus Christ will be less 
commanding in the Church of the Future than it is in the 
Church of the present. There never was a time when men 
believed in Jesus of Nazareth as firmly as they do to-day. 
I cannot doubt that this will be increasingly true in the 
future. But, even as all theology becomes more distinct- 
ively ethical and spiritual, it is probable that increasing 
emphasis will be put upon the moral elements of our Lord's 
personality ; that when men amfm his divinity they will 
think more of the quality, and less of the quantity of his 
being. When the thought of the Church lays hold on the 
righteousness and the love of its Lord, more than on his 
natural attributes, her communion with him will bring her 
more abundant gifts. But I cannot doubt that the Church 
will hold fast her faith in her divine Lord and Master, 
exalting him, trusting him and following him in the future 



278 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

far more loyally than in the past. " The Church that 
shakes itself free from Jesus Christ," says an eminent 
Unitarian minister,* " is destined to an early decay and 
death. * * * My observation and experience, through 
fifty years of effort and conflict, teach me that child-like 
but manly allegiance to Him who is the Captain of our 
salvation, is the general condition and measure of spiritual, 
moral and philanthropic success." The experience of the 
past verifies this saying, and the Church of the Future will 
not despise the experience of the past. 

4. The fact of sin will not be denied by the Church of 
the Future. That vicious compound of materialism and 
sentimentalism, now so widely current, by which moral 
evil is explained away, and evil doers are comforted in their 
evil doing with the assurance that everything they do is the 
result of circumstance or the product of organization, will 
no longer confuse the consciences of men. Doubtless 
organization and circumstance will be taken into the 
account in estimating human, conduct ; but the power of 
the human will to control the natural tendencies, to release 
itself from entangling circumstances, and to lay hold on 
the divine grace by which it may overcome sin, will also be 
clearly understood. The supremacy of the moral nature 
will be vindicated ; men will be held to a strict account for 
their deeds, and made to understand that the plea of moral 
insanity, while it may sometimes be allowed, w T ill in every 
case be rigidly traversed. 

Punishment, as conceived and represented by the Church 
of the Future, will not be an arbitrary infliction of suffering, 
but the natural and inevitable consequence of disobedience 

* Dr. Wm. G. Eliot. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 279 

to law. It will be discovered that the moral law is incorpor- 
ated into the natural order, and that its sanctions are found 
in that order ; while, in the work of redemption, God inter- 
poses by his personal and supernatural grace to save men 
from the consequences of their own disobedience and folly. 
Law is natural ; grace is supernatural. Punishment is the 
fruit of our own doings ; the mercy and help that bring 
salvation are the free gift of the divine love. 

With times and seasons and dates and numbers the 
Church of the Future, when dealing with punishment, will 
be much less familiar than the Church of the past has been. 
Its teaching on this subject will have the tendency to bring 
these dread realities near; judgment and retribution will 
not be put far off among the " last things," and hidden from 
the eyes of men behind the curtain that falls upon life's 
strange eventful history ; their trumpet will be sounding, 
and their note of doom ringing in the ears of men con- 
tinually ; transgressors will be made to see, what they now 
so dimly apprehend, that no effect can be more closely 
joined to its cause than penalty to sin. Just what theories 
the future Church may hold with respect to this great 
matter I will not prophecy ; but it will not blink the fact of 
sin, nor overlook the truth that salvation from sin must 
come from above, nor put out of sight the solemn truth, 
that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." 

5. I have indicated, but roughly, some of the essential 
truths which are sure to survive the destructive criticism of 
these times, and to be incorporated, in some form, into the 
creed of the future. Whatever that creed may be, however, 
it will not be put to the kind of use which the creed of the 
present is made to serve. It will not be laid down as the 



280 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

doctrinal plank over which everybody must walk who 
comes into the communion of the Church. The Church 
may have some sort of concise statement of truth as the 
charter of its existence ; but it will not insist on the accept- 
ance of this doctrinal statement by those who seek admis- 
sion to its fellowship. The church, like every other organ- 
ism, has an organic idea, and that is simple loyalty to Jesus 
Christ, the head of the Church. An assemblage of persons 
which does not expect of its members this loyalty is not a 
Christian Church ; an organization which does expect and 
require this, whatever its errors may be, is a Christian 
Church. Whoever exhibits this loyalty belongs to Christ ; 
and what right have you or I to shut him out of our com- 
munion because he does not understand or accept certain 
doctrinal statements that we have chosen to make? The 
creed of the future will not be a barrier over which men 
must climb to get into the Church of the Future. There 
will be but one door into that Church — you may call it 
broad or narrow — Christ will be the door. 

II. What will be the polity of the future Church? 
Will it be governed episcopally, by prelates or bishops, or 
presbyterially, by an elect few of its members, or congrega- 
tionally, by the people themselves. That is a question 
which I am not concerned to answer. It is likely that, of 
these various sorts of ecclesiastical machinery, each of the 
several religious bodies will freely choose that which it likes 
best. Doubtless the Church will have some form of govern- 
ment : it will not be a holy mob ; lawlessness will not be 
regarded as the supreme good, in Church or in State. 
Heaven itself is a kingdom ; and the New Jerusalem that 
comes down from heaven will be fashioned on the same 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 281 

model. The notion that every human being ought to do 
just what he likes, with no reference to the welfare of his 
neighbors, is a doctrine of the woods, and not of perfected 
society. Doubtless, too, there will be in the future Church 
the largest measure of true liberty. The great problem of 
all governments, ecclesiastical and political, has been 
rightly to adjust the conflicting claims of authority and 
liberty ; to give the individual the widest possible freedom 
and yet preserve society from disorder and anarchy. Of 
this problem, both in Church and in State, we must trust 
the future to find the right solution. 

In whatever ecclesiastical mould the Church of the 
Future may be cast, there will be no mean sectarianism in 
existence then. Less will be said about Christian union 
then than now; but much more will be done about it. The 
various families of Christians will dwell as happily together 
as well-bred families now do in society ; it will be regarded 
as a mark of ill-breeding for one Church to be jealous of 
the growth or influence of another, just as it now is for one 
neighbor to be jealous because another neighbor dwells in a 
larger house or drives a finer carriage. There will not be 
one form of belief nor one form of worship ; there will be 
as many varieties as there are at present. When the 
mountains are all of one height, and the rivers are all of 
one width, and the trees are all pollards, and the flowers are 
all after one pattern; when our houses are all alike, and 
our costumes all alike, and our appetites all crave the same 
viands, then, and not before, our churches will be all alike. 
But though there be diversities of form in the future, there 
will be real and thorough intercommunion and co-operation 
among Christians of all names, and nothing will be permit- 



THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

ted to hold apart those who follow the same Leader and 
travel the same road. 

V. What kind of work will be done by the Church of 
the Future ? That is a large question ; I will not attempt 
to answer it with any degree of minuteness. It will have 
many ways of working that the Church of the present has 
not dreamed of. For, however it may be with reference to 
dectrine, in the practical development of its life the Church 
of the Future will be a broad Church — broader by far than 
any now upon the earth. "The field is the world," Christ 
has told us; and in that better day the Church will have 
learned to occupy the field. 

1. Paul said that as a preacher of the gospel he 
magnified his office. There is no office more honorable. 
But it must not be inferred that there is no other way of 
preaching the gospel except the formal utterance of 
religious truth, in the presence of a congregation. Cer- 
tainly the living voice, so far as it reaches, is the best of all 
vehicles for the conveying of truth. A power can be put 
into spoken words which written words cannot contain. 
For this reason the old fashion of preaching the gospel will 
be continued, beyond a question, through all the future. 
The gospel will be preached in the latter day as the Christ 
preached it on the Mount of the Beatitudes and by the 
shores of the Sea of Galilee ; and the common air will 
thrill with the joyful sound as the messengers of God 
declare the good tidings to men. 

But the truth will be disseminated, in that time, in 
many other ways. For though the living voice is the best 
instrument for the proclamation of the truth, so far as it 
will reach, the living voice cannot reach very far. One or 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 283 

two thousand people are the most that an ordinary man can 
be expected to address at one time ; while, by other 
methods of communication which have been discovered 
since Christ was on the earth, it is possible for one man to 
reach an unlimited number. The art of printing has been 
given to the world since that day ; and by that invention 
the whole business of instructing and influencing men has 
been revolutionized. The Church has already appropriated 
this agency ; the printed word now reaches multitudes that 
the living voice does not reach ; and it is doubtless true that 
this agency will be employed in the future more effectively 
than in the past. Let no one suppose that these modern 
methods are any less fully authorized than those ancient 
ones. The command to preach the gospel includes the 
command to print the gospel. It means, Proclaim it ; 
spread it ; let all the world know it ; that is all it means. 
It does not shut us up to any one way of proclaiming it. 
The method of oral preaching may keep the place of 
eminence, but it will be supplemented by other and no less 
valid methods. 

Neither will the range of teaching be so narrow in the 
future as it has sometimes been in the past. It is the 
Roman Catholic theory that the work of education belongs 
to the Church ; our American policy entrusts it mainly to 
the State. Up to a certain point we may adopt the Ameri- 
can theory ; but it is a grave question whether we have not 
pushed it quite too far. If, however, the machinery of 
public instruction be left mainly in the control of the 
State, there will still be a great function remaining for the 
Church to fulfil. The work of education, in its ministry, 
must always keep pace with the work of conversion. To 



28 Jf THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

apply the ethical rule of the New Testament to the conduct 
of individuals, and to the relations of men in society, will 
be the constant obligation of the pulpit. Out of Zion must 
go forth the law by which parents, children, neighbors, 
citizens, workmen, masters, teachers, pupils, benefactors, 
beneficiaries, shall guide their behavior. The application 
of the Christian law to all the concerns of human life ; the 
extension of the kingdom of heaven so that it shall cover 
all the kingdoms of this world — this is the problem to be 
solved in the future teachings of the Church. There is a 
gospel of the secular life which it will hear with joy, and 
which it will not cease to proclaim. Remembering that 
men are to be sanctified through God's word of truth, it will 
remember also that every truth which God has uttered, 
whether in the rocks of the shore, or in the lilies of the 
field, or in the secret chambers of the soul, or in the firm 
characters by which his purpose is traced upon the page of 
history, is God's word, to be reverently studied and com- 
pared with every other part of his revelation. 

Science, long the night mare of the theologians, will no 
more trouble their dreams ; it will be understood that there 
can be no conflict between truths ; that the upper and the 
underworlds are not discordant, but harmonious ; that 
physical science has its facts and its laws, and spiritual 
science its facts and its laws ; that these are diverse but not 
contradictory, and that the one is just as positive and 
knowable as the other. The unfriendliness now existing 
between the scientists and the theologians will exist no 
longer; because both parties will have learned wisdom. 
The theologians will stop quarreling with facts ; the 
scientists will cease to insist that nothing is a fact which 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 285 

cannot be weighed with steelyards. Men will be cautious, 
in the future, about accepting, scientific theories; perhaps 
the scientists themselves may be a little more cautious* by 
that time ; but when a fact or a law is established by suffi- 
cient evidence, the religionist of the future will not be such 
a fool as to fight against it. If it make a modification of 
his opinions necessary he will modify his opinions to con- 
form them to the fact ; if it require a new interpretation of 
Scripture, he will interpret the Scripture to make it conform 
to the fact. That will seem to him a perfectly natural thing 
to do. And he will read, with a half-incredulous wonder, 
the strenuous debates of this century, in which obstinate 
dogmatists have beaten their own brains out against facts. 
The reconciliation of science with religion over which the 
church of the present is often puzzled, will give the Church 
of the Future no trouble. 

As you go down the long avenue in the great city in 
the evening, you pass between two parallel rows of street- 
lamps. Near you on either hand the lights of each row are 
isolated from one another ; there seems to be quite a space 
between the lamps, and between the rows flows the turbu- 
lent stream of travel, the noisy cars and the clattering 
carriages. But, as you look ahead, you notice that the 
space between the lamps of each row seems to lessen the 
further on your eye ranges, and that the two rows seem to 
draw nearer together, till at length, far off, the two converg- 
ing lines of light are blended into one. 

So, as we travel through this world, the lights of 
Religion and of Science seem to range themselves on either 
side our way. There are travelers who walk by the light of 
the one, and travelers who walk by the light of the other — 



286 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

(not all going in the same direction either) — while between 
the. two there are passengers who dimly see by the light of 
both. The lights on either side are separated by spaces of 
darkness ; now and then we come upon truths that are 
luminous, both in science and religion ; but we fail to bring 
them together into relations of unity ; while between the 
two rows of lamps the interval is so wide and so full of 
strife and clamor, that it seems hardly safe to pass from 
the one to the other. But look down through the future ! 
Can you not see that the dark spaces shorten, that the 
parted lives converge, that beyond these noises, in the far- 
off silence of the Latter Day, they merge into a common 
glory? 

2. But the work of teaching will not be the only work 
to which the Church of the Future will address itself. 
Large and wise enterprises for the welfare of men will be 
set on foot ; many of the instrumentalities now in use will 
continue to be employed, under modified forms, and many 
new ones will be devised. It will be understood that the 
law of the Church is simply this, u Let us do good to all 
men as we have opportunity." No means of making men 
better will be counted unlawful ; everything that helps to lift 
them out of misery and to bring them near to God will be 
received with thanksgiving. The fact will be kept before 
the mind of the Church that its work is the work of Christ 
— to save men; to save them, not by mutilating but by 
completing their manhood; to save them, as Christ did, 
from disease and ignorance and loneliness and sorrow, but, 
greatest of all, to save them from their sins. The moral 
evil is the radical evil, and the remedy will be applied first 
and most faithfully to this. Yet it is impossible to do this 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 287 

work as it ought to be done, without doing at the same 
time many other things. So the various ministries of 
philanthropy are and must ever be an inseparable part of 
the work of the Church. It is to be hoped that in the 
future there will be less of doing good by proxy and more 
of personal sympathy and help ; that the Church will learn 
a little better how to bring the giver and the receiver into 
contact, that they may share the blessing together. 

Much of the sin and sorrow of the race arises out of 
bad social conditions. Inequitable relations between labor 
and capital; unwise domestic relations; the neglect of 
needful restrictions on vice and evil doing, all these 
occasion more or less misery and sin. The Church of the 
Future will take hold of all these matters with a firm hand ; 
it will investigate them and discuss them, till a sound 
public opinion is created to deal with them ; and while it 
will not entertain the delusion that such mischiefs can all 
be corrected by legislation, it will not hesitate to do what 
can be done by force of law to supply the remedies. The 
Church of the Future would be a very uncomfortable 
society for some fogies of the present to belong to ; for it 
will meddle with politics far more than any of the Churches 
of our time have ever dared to do. 

In short, the Church of the Future, loyal to its great 
Head, and leaning on his counsel and his might, will go 
out into the world and take possession of it, in his name. 
Wherever there are wrongs it will strive to right them; 
wherever there are needs it will work to supply them ; 
wherever there are sorrows it will love to comfort them ; 
wherever there are any whom Christ would have helped, it 
will go to them and carry the gifts he came to bring. 



288 THINGS NEW AND OLD. 

Thus, very imperfectly, I have sought to outline the 
character of the Church of the Future. It appears to me 
that such a study may have some value for us all. Our 
work is in the present, and it is not well for us to get too 
far in advance of our time. The fact that none of the 
Churches of the present are quite so catholic in their 
spirit or quite so vigorous in their life as this Church of 
our imagination, by no means justifies us in standing aloof 
fron them all ; all human methods are imperfect; and it is 
much easier to define a perfect circle than it is to draw one. 
The best thing we can do, under the circumstances, is to 
take such tools are at hand and do the best possible work 
with them. Nevertheless, it is well to abide, now and then, 
in the region of the ideal — to think of what might be ; and 
it is certain that the ideals of the noblest work must come, 
as they have always come, out of the future rather than 
the past. 

On the morning of that day when the Savior rose, the 
women who sought the sepulcher found there not what they 
sought, but two young men in shining garments greeted 
them from the grave-side, saying ; " Why seek ye the 
living among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen, and 
behold he goeth before you into Galilee." So to all who 
seek amid the traditions of a vanished past for the warrant 
of their faith and the pattern of their life, God's angel 
speaks to-day : Look not for this Christ in the cerements 
of old forms or phrases; he is not here; he is risen; the 
world is full of the light that shines through the bars of 
his sepulcher; you, like the Magdalene, may hear his glad 
" All hail ! " Lo, he goeth before you ; rise and follow him ! 



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